- Excerpt
Mercy Machine
an excerpt from the new book
POST-RAPTURE RADIO:
Lost Writings from a Failed Revolution
by Russell Rathbun
INTRODUCTION
Russell Rathbun is an emergent church preacher from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Post-Rapture
Radio is a hilarious account of one man's quest to
change the face of christianity, masquerading as a collection of
sermons and journal entries by the fictional Rev. Richard Lamblove.
Post-Rapture Radio is
a scathing indictment of contemporary Christian culture, "a fascist state [where] everyone
says they're really glad to see you." It includes rants such as Jesus
in a Suitcase, Rotarian Zombies, eschatology vs. scatology, spiritual
shopping, among others. This is the book that dares to ask: If the world
comes to an end and you're still here, were you spared or left behind?
The excerpt below is called "Mercy Machine," about an "automated individual
liturgical device" capable of dispensing both mercy and judgment. The
excerpt challenges the Christian belief in a God who is both forgiver
and punisher.
More information about the new book, Post-Rapture Radio,
and author Russell Rathbun follows the excerpt. Enjoy!
Mercy Machine
from the notebooks
of Rev. Lamblove
as revealed by Russell Rathbun
I am not going to tell
you who this happened to. I am just going to tell you that it
happened and I am going to tell what happened.
I can tell you what happened because I saw some of it, and I heard about
all of it. Just for the purposes of telling you this story -- because
it is easier to tell and listen to a story when the main person in the
story has a name -- just because of that, I am going to tell you that
his name was Mortimer Quindelson. No, that is a dumb name. Nicholas,
yeah, Nick. Pastor Nick. He is a pastor.
Nick is a bit off. OK, maybe not off. Maybe eccentric is a
better word. Maybe I should just say that he has ideas about the world
-- about the church mostly, but I guess they are about the world, too.
So Nick is a bit eccentric. OK, really he is crazy, but in a good way.
The first time I saw the machine, it wasn't finished. It was just barely
started, but he showed me the drawings and told me how all the pieces
would go together. He told me how it would work.
He showed it to me as the result of a conversation
we had at this coffee shop where I work part time. And when I am not
working there I hang out there a lot. (All the people who go there
seem to hang out there a lot.) Nick was sitting at a table near mine,
and he had his notebook out. (He always had his notebook out. So do
most of the people there. I guess I do, too. That is the kind of place
it is.) Because our tables are so close, I can hear him whisper in
a sort of under-the-breath, coffee-breath tone, "John's got the water; Jesus has got the fire. John's got the water;
Jesus has got the fire. John's got the water; Jesus has got the fire." So
I look up and look over at Pastor Nick, and Pastor Nick looks up and
looks over at me and then smiles, like he just realized that he was saying
that out loud and not in his head. He makes an apologetic move of his
head and gestures with one hand, first slightly to his notebook and then
slightly to me by way of explanation and starts to say something but
then stops and just smiles. To indicate that I understand, I say, "John's
got the water; Jesus has got the fire?" Nick nods his head and says, "Yeah," and
stifles a giggle.
I put down my pen and say, "What are you working on, Reverend?" I
call him reverend in a kind of joking way, but also to show him a little
respect, even though I know he doesn't work at a church anymore. And
because I do respect him.
Nick says, "Oh you know, I'm just trying to figure some things out." I
say, "Oh I know. We all are." I say that because this is how we talk
at the coffee shop. Make contact but don't really get into someone else's
business, especially the business in somebody's notebook. Then Nick darts
his head forward and toward me and says, "I'm making something, building
something, and I'm trying to figure out how to build it. I've never built
anything before so it is kind of hard." He pauses. "Do you want to know
what I'm building."
"Yeah, oh yeah, sure," I say, because if someone
does want to tell you about the business in their notebook, it is only
polite to listen -- and then hope it isn't poetry.
"Come here," he says. I get up and sit down at his table; he turns his
open notebook around to face me and pushes it across the table. I squint
and look, and while intriguing, it's not obvious what the contraption
is. Pastor Nick knows this so he tells me, "It's a mercy machine."
"A mercy machine?"
"Yeah," he says, "exactly. It is an automated
individual liturgical device."
Now, I need to tell you so you know, when I said Nick was crazy, I didn't
really mean he was crazy -- not clinically, anyway -- and when I said
he was a pastor but isn't anymore, I didn't mean it in the sense that
he used to be a pastor back in the sixties on a hippie commune and too
much of the Timothy Leary got to him so he is not a pastor anymore. What
I mean is that until very recently, he was one of the up-and-coming new
church leaders at a multi-staff church in the western suburbs, but he
quit -- or was fired or let go. I don't know, but whatever it was, I
think it was the result of Pastor Nick being crazy in a good way.
Nick starts to tell me about the mercy machine
and then he stops. His eyes tell me he has left, and when he comes
back he says, "Do you want
to see it?"
I say, "Yeah," because it seems like the kind
of crazy I like.
"Come on." He grabs his notebook and shoves it
in his bag.
"Now?" I say.
"Yeah, now." So I gather up my stuff and say, "Let's go." Because
people who spend a lot of time in coffee shops are people that don't
have a lot else going on and can run off in the middle of the afternoon
to see a partially finished automated individual liturgical device.
"I'll drive," Pastor Nick says. We get in his
nineties-era, brown minivan. I buckle up and look over my shoulder.
The back seats have been removed; the space is filled with wood and
scrap metal and jugs of purified water and cans of gas. The minivan
smells a little like gas.
"Nick, what's the gas for?"
"The fire."
I tell him it seems more like he is building
a judgment machine, not a mercy machine. He says, "The more I read the book, the less I can tell
them apart." He starts the engine and drives. He starts telling me the
answer to a question that for some reason hadn't entered my mind: Why
is Pastor Nick making a mercy machine?
"The church is bankrupt," he begins. "The church
is bankrupt, shallow, hollow, dead, with no truth in it. The leaders
who control the church are treacherous, shallow, hollow, dead. Dead
with no life left in them. They are commodifiers of the gospel, distorting
it to make it a product that is palpable to a shallow, hollow, dead
culture with no truth left in it. They are incapable of administering
the sacraments of the church because they don't even remember what
they are really about. For example, at my former place of employment,
when I taught the Baptism Preparation classes, I got in a lot of trouble
for refusing to include the final session -- the one where you helped
the Baptism Candidates decide on the best package.
"The standard package came free of charge and
included a baptism certificate and a candle to commemorate the event.
We were to offer the standard package but to point out that it didn't
provide much in the way of 'artifacting' the event. In order to make
the event more real for the candidates, it was recommended that they
at least choose the 'Ethiopian' package, named for the Ethiopian eunuch
that Phillip baptized on the side of the road. This package included
a frame for the certificate and the candidate's name in gold on the
candle. Hardly anyone chooses this one, and I always suspected it was
purposefully named to discourage people, because nobody really wants
to associate their baptism with a eunuch.
"The 'Cornelius' was the right choice. Named
for the wealthy centurion of the Italian cohort that Peter baptized,
this package cost quite a bit more, but after all, you are only baptized
once (or more if you feel like it's necessary). The 'Cornelius' included
the certificate with a frame upgrade, the candle with name in gold
and a candle holder, plus a videotape of the baptism and an Egyptian
cotton bath towel embroidered with the words 'Remember your baptism'
on it.
"You see what I mean?"
I did but I was a little distracted because as Pastor Nick talked, he
kept looking over at me and not at the traffic, which was considerable.
Also whenever he became excited about a point, he would push on the accelerator.
"You see what I mean?" he says, and the minivan lurches forward. "They
don't even know what it is about. They forget the judgment."
"The judgment?" I say. "In baptism?"
"Yeah, read Luke. In the beginning of Luke, right
before baptizing people, John says, 'I baptize you with water but he
will baptize you with fire and the Holy Spirit.' Where is the fire
in baptism? Everybody does the water but where is the fire?"
I tell him I have never really heard of the fire part of the baptism.
"Exactly," he says, punching the accelerator. "You
see John's baptism -- water baptism -- is a baptism of repentance.
It is the act of an individual. It is the starting point. But Jesus'
baptism -- fire baptism -- is a baptism of judgment. It is the refiner's
fire that burns away the shell and the lies, the vacuous detritus.
John says this fire is unquenchable."
"That fire baptism doesn't seem like a very good thing." He
looks at me like I have just said the dumbest thing in the world.
"What do you mean, not a good thing?"
I say, "You know, the judgment."
"The judgment is the very best thing. It comes with the mercy. Malachai
says, 'For he is like a refiner's fire. He will sit as a refiner and
purifier of silver and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine
them like gold and silver until they present offerings to the Lord that
are righteous.' You see. It's all over the book -- the mercy and
the judgment. But you know what haunts me?"
At this point I'm not sure I want to know what haunts him. He doesn't
wait for me to answer.
"12:49. 12:49 haunts me. I can't quite figure
it out."
"Oh yeah, 12:49," I say, pretending to know what
he is talking about.
"Luke 12:49," he says. "It is the only other
place in Luke that talks about Jesus' baptism. I found it because I
was looking up fire passages. It says, 'I came to bring fire to the
earth and how I wish that it was already kindled! I have a baptism
with which to be baptized and what stress I am under until it is completed.'
It kind of sounds like Jesus is going to be the one baptized with fire,
like he receives the judgment but that doesn't make sense."
We pull into his driveway. He turns off the engine, hits the garage
door-opener button, and jumps out.
"Come on," he is practically running. I follow him. The garage door
opens, slowly revealing a mess that must, I think, mirror his mind. More
wood scraps and metal, more jugs of purified water, big water-cooler-type
bottles, and more gas cans. The garage really smells like gas. There
are all sorts of drawings tacked up on the wall and spread over the workbench,
and the scripture verses he was quoting me are blown up to yard-sign
size and tacked to the wall. He has circled and highlighted certain words
("fire" most frequently). On the wall I see spray-painted: "12:49?" In
the middle of the garage is the mercy machine.
It is a wooden box the size of a phone booth
or a coffin standing on end. There is a handle on the side like a slot
machine but bigger and made of wood. The backside is removed, and I
can see the inner workings -- a mess of metal springs and copper pipes.
There are two tanks fastened to the inner sides. One says "water"; the other says "gas." I moved around
to the front. That's when I saw, mounted on top of the mercy machine
on a short pole, a metal crucifix about six inches tall. Coming out of
the front is what looks like a showerhead. Big gold letters above it
spell "mercy"; further down is a sort of metal nozzle sticking out. The
word above it is "judgment."
Pastor Nick is watching me look everything over. He is grinning and
bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, his arms hugging himself.
When I look at him, he starts in again with the frantic talking, moving
around the mercy machine, showing me how it is supposed to work.
"You see," he says, "the Baptism Candidate stands
in front like this and grabs the handle on the side and pumps it a
bunch of times. This simultaneously builds up pressure in the tanks
and winds up a spring. Then you step on this pedal and it releases
the water, showering the person with water, really drenching them.
Then the spring unwinds and the steel strikes this flint and lights
the pilot and it goes around once more and opens the gas valve and
it shoots fire out here.
"What do you think?" he says.
I say, "It, uh, seems like it would burn the
Baptism Candidate."
He rubs his forehead, "Yeah," he says. "That's
the part I can't figure out. I wish there was some way I could symbolically
burn them, or have the fire just shoot our briefly, so it wouldn't
burn them too bad. I thought about having the fire shoot out first,
followed immediately by the water to put out the fire or cool off any
burn, but I think theologically it wouldn't be correct. I think it
will be ready to test next week."
He was quiet on the ride back to the coffee shop, but from the way his
eyes were darting around and the occasional punching of the accelerator,
I don't think it was quiet in his head.
I thought about calling him that next week, but I didn't have his phone
number and realized I didn't even know his last name. The only time I
had ever seen him outside the coffee shop was on that trip to his house.
On Thursday Pastor Nick walked into the coffee
shop. I looked at him. He smiled his smile, but it was a bigger grin
than I'd seen before. He had tested the mercy machine. He sat down
at my table. From the looks of him, apparently what was untrue, shallow,
and contained no life was his hair. The refiner's fire had also burned
a good portion of his left arm. It was covered in a bandage up to his
elbow. I also saw a
bit of a gauze bandage sticking out of the collar of his shirt. "Tell
me," I said.
"Well," he said, "I stood in position and I pumped
the handle. I pumped it up pretty good until I could feel the pressure
building up. Then I stepped on the pedal and nothing happened. I could
hear the spring unwinding and then a little trickle of water came out.
Then I heard a whoosh followed by the crackle of fire. It was burning
inside the machine. I could see flames flickering out from under the
bottom base and through all the seams on the sides. Then there was
another whoosh, and fire was shooting out of the top, completely engulfing
the crucifix. I should have run right then, but the crucifix started
to turn a dull red; it was so hot that the crucifix went from red to
orange to bright yellow before my eyes. It was amazing."
Pastor Nick continued: "I heard this loud crack and saw that the fire
had burned through the front of the base, and the whole thing fell forward.
I tried to jump back, but I wasn't fast enough. The showerhead came down
on my arm and hand, and it was so hot that it burned me pretty good.
The whole machine just collapsed on top of me. And the crucifix," he
winced with pain, "the crucifix." He unbuttoned his shirt halfway and
peeled off the big bandage on the left side of his chest to reveal a
nearly perfect image of the Son of God branded deep in his skin.
"Man," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm lucky to be alive. My clothes
were on fire. I ran out of the garage and did the stop, drop, and roll
on the lawn. The garage -- totally gone. The house -- completely gutted.
Everything in it gone -- everything."
"Man," I said again. "The mercy machine."
"Yeah," he said. "It worked perfectly"
Copyright ©2005 by Russell Rathbun. All Rights
Reserved. Excerpted from Post-Rapture Radio (2005, $21.95, Cloth) by Russell Rathbun
by permission of Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint.
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