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Jesus. The savior of the world. Born in bloody Bethlehem. In a bloody manger, of all things. That’s my sermon. The end. As if the bloody sinful bastards will even come – because you know they bloody well never come – to hear my Christmas sermons. Or any other sermons. To hear the hope that little child gave to this accursed world. Hell, I wonder why I spend the time making them. Maybe because the Pope tells me to do it. Maybe because it’s what I choose to do. Maybe bloody neither.
I oughtn’t be so negative. I look at Eleanor over there. She listens – in her own way. Can’t hear nothing, though. Deaf, she is. And blind as bat in her old age. Has to get right up close to see anything. Still stands in the doorway, greeting the few that come even if she can’t rightly see them. She don’t know nothing else. Maybe it’s a good thing I only have a handful of parishioners a week. And maybe it’s a good thing that nobody comes to listen to my sermons on Christmas. I’d probably botch the damned thing. Get the parents’ names all screwed up. Or the purpose of the bloody stories. But how can you screw up the most famous couple – hell, the most famous story! – in all of Christendom? What…Mary and Peter instead of Mary and Joseph? Born in…where?.. bloody Cornwall? Like that would ever happen! Now if it were an Old Testament type sermon, I could see me botching that. I mean, you could easily get Noah and Moses confused if you didn’t know who the hell they were in the first place. And what of those others – Enoch and Methuselah and Shearjashub. Who the hell were they, anyway? Nobody cares anymore.
The only thing they use the chapel for these days is weddings. They get themselves eager for a solemn day for family, anticipating what they’ve probably already been doing in bed for years – just making it legitimate, I guess – and then pay their money for a license. A legal piece of damnable paper. They don’t worry about ethics, or morals, or the sanctity of marriage anymore. Hell, if I weren’t a priest, I’d probably marry Eleanor over there. Maybe she could do my sock-mending, ‘stead of me doing it all on a Friday night. …And then these couples that get married here in this chapel have affairs and get divorced, or they find some way to annul what they thought was a lifelong commitment. Then where are they?
‘Course they think I don’t give a damn. And maybe I don’t – from the standpoint of my profession. I mean, if you’re getting paid for it, being a lazy bastard is damn fine living, ain’t it? And if the Church is paying your way to heaven, then what does it matter if you say foul things, or do bloody anything untoward, because in the end it all comes ‘round? But it’s not really like that, of course. Eternity is real enough, even if one’s not alive to live it. Besides, I’ve got myself to think about, my pension. Out here in God’s own No Man’s Land, it can get pretty lonely.
So it’s the weddings – and the funerals – that give me the most comfort. I can fantasize about them both – about the happiness both provide. Or the sadness. It’s a choice, really. And when it all comes down to it, weddings and funerals give us pause to think why we’re all on this earth. What is life all about, anyway? Is it for sex? For pleasure? For riches? For religion? For family? For friends? Or is it for something more and entirely separate?
Maybe it’s not the answers we want, but the right questions.