“Dr. Beker, I’m just not sure.”

It was late, when stillness finally had its way, and a drunk Jerry was with Prof. Beker after banging on his door. Jerry knew he would be up.

“Really, Jerry boy?” said Chris smirking through his own alcohol haze.

Silence.

“Do you ever have doubts?” Jerry persisted leaning heavily on the kitchen counter. “How does everyone here do it? How are they all so sure?”

Chris smiled a thin conspiratorial smile. “You are either talking to the very wrong guy or the very right guy.” 

“You’re the only one I can talk to. Everyone else might rat me out that I don’t belong here. Or they’ll patronize me and say, ‘You’ll come around if it’s God’s will.’ Well, is God’s will my will? Helping kids, being close to God, this is my will. How could God not want this?”

“What are you doing here? Is it to serve you or to serve others? I knew it; I knew it. You cannot give. You are empty. You need a mother. You need to be succored.” He slobbered the last word like Sylvester the Cat.

Jerry shuffled over to the kitchen table and slumped into a chair opposite Chris. His head dropped to the table with a clunk. He felt the cool of the Formica. 

“Look at what we do,” Jerry garbled into the table, then he raised his head back up. “You especially. Look at what we do.”

Jerry detected a flash of anger in Chris’ eyes, then they grew soft. “Yes,” he said quietly. ”Yes. Look at what we do. It’s a giant ugly machine and it eats people alive, including me, yet here I am sitting in this kitchen talking with you.”

“I just see so many things wrong, so many things wrong with this seminary, and it makes me furious,” said Jerry.

“Let me show you something.”

 He left the room and, in a bit, came back with a photo. Cracked and yellowed, it was a black and white photo of a young woman with long wavy hair holding a young boy on her hip. The boy laughed into the camera. 

“Mom,” said Chris. “This picture survived. She didn’t. I gave up long ago trying to make sense of it. There is no sense. And it is with this broken heart that I continue to live.”

Jerry studied the picture. The young boy’s delight showed no fear. Emboldened by his mom, he was ready to take on the world.

“This is religion, Jerry boy. This longing for God, a god who abandoned us, as deep as longing for your mother, is the groaning of creation.

“You think you ache now? You are only just beginning.

“We live to comfort each other. That is ministry, my friend. These political issues, they come and they go, but to provide comfort amidst the darkness, amidst the terror, that is ministry. The deeper you go into your pain, the more relevant your ministry becomes.

“I don’t know what lies ahead for you. It’s not fun, ministry. This is no place to escape from life if that’s what you’re doing.”

“I just want a home where everyone’s happy.”

Dr. Beker erupted in laughter. As if baying at the moon, he laughed until tears ran down his face. 

“Ooh boy, Jerry, you’re killing me, you really are.”

Jerry suddenly understood the intensity in Prof. Beker’s eyes. It wasn’t intensity at all, it was the bottomless terror of a little boy who saw his mom dragged away from him, forever.