Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,60
all but sagging with weariness and dread. But I only said, “If Jarret noticed us and wanted to call us a Satanic cult, your preaching wouldn’t stop him. Would you be willing to speak at Gathering?”
That surprised him. “You mean while you’re having your services?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t talk about Earthseed. I want to preach.”
“Preach, then.”
“What’s the catch?”
“You should know. You’ve been to our services. You choose the topic. You say what you want. But afterward there will be questions and discussion.”
“I’m not out to teach a class. I want to preach a sermon.”
“That’s not our way, Marc. If you speak, you have to face questions and discussion. You need to be ready for that. Besides, no matter what you call it, a good sermon is just a lesson that you’re trying to teach.”
“But…you won’t try to get in the way of my preaching at the Gathering if I take questions afterward?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I’ll do it.”
“It’s no joke, Marc.”
“I know. It’s no joke to me either.”
“I mean we’re as serious about the discussion as you are about the sermon. Some of our people might probe and dissect in ways you won’t like.”
“Okay, I can handle it.”
No, I didn’t think he could. But an unpleasant thing should be done quickly if it must be done at all. My brother had a sermon ready. He’d been working on it in his spare moments. Since I was scheduled to speak at the Gathering this morning, I was able to step aside for him, let him speak at once.
He didn’t pull his punches. He confronted us, challenged us directly from the Bible—first from Isaiah again, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God will stand for ever.” Then later from Malachi, “For I am the Lord. I change not.” And then from Hebrews, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines.”
Marc doesn’t have our father’s impressive voice, and he knows it. He uses what he has skillfully, and, of course, it helps that he’s so good-looking. But once he had preached his sermon on the changelessness of God, Jorge Cho spoke up. Jorge was next to Diamond Scott as usual. He has told me he intends to marry Di, but Di has been looking at my brother in a way that Jorge doesn’t like at all. There’s a rivalry between Marc and Jorge anyway. They’re both young and competitive.
“We believe that all things change,” Jorge said, “even though all things don’t necessarily change in all ways. Why do you believe God doesn’t change?”
My brother smiled. “But even you believe that your God doesn’t change. Your God promotes change, but he stays the same.”
That surprised me. Marc shouldn’t have made such avoidable mistakes. He’s had plenty of time to read, talk, and hear about Earthseed, but somehow, he’s misunderstood.
Travis was the first to point out the error. “God is Change,” he said. “God promotes nothing. Nothing at all.”
And Zahra, of all people, said, “Our God isn’t male. Change has no sex. Marc, you don’t know enough about us yet even to criticize us.”
Jorge began repeating his question before Zahra had finished. “Why do you think your God doesn’t change? How can you prove it?”
“I have faith that it’s true,” Marc said. “Belief must be based on faith as much as on proofs.”
“But there must be some test,” Jorge said. “You must have a way to know when your faith is sensible and when it makes no sense.”
“The test is the Bible, of course. When the Bible tells us something—in this case, it tells us several times—we can believe it. We can have faith that it is true.”
Antonio Cortez, Lucio’s oldest nephew, jumped in. “Look,” he said, “in the Bible, God does things. Things happen and he reacts. He makes things. He gets angry. He destroys things…”
“But he, himself, doesn’t change,” my brother said.
“Oh, come on,” Tori Mora shouted in open disgust. “To take action is to change. It’s to go from action to inaction. And he goes from calmness to anger—he gets angry a lot. And—”
“And in Genesis,” her stepsister Doe said, “he lets some of his favorite men have children with their sisters or daughters. Then in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, he says anyone who does that should be killed.”
“Right,” Jorge said. “I was just reading that last week. It is no good to say that something is true because the Bible says it is true and then forget that a few