Last Sunday, the Temp did something so offensive that I don't think I can stand to be in his presence again.
The gospel reading was the passage where Jesus says that if your hand/foot/eye causes you to sin, cut it off, because it's better to go to heaven maimed than to go to hell with an intact body. My RFP taught us that, in the Jewish culture of the first-century Middle East, such hyperbole was common (the "camel through the eye of a needle" is another example). The point Jesus was making is that, regardless of how important something is to you, if it keeps you apart from God, you should get rid of it. His listeners understood that.
I arrived somewhat late and, as I didn't feel like crawling over other people to get into a pew, I sat on a chair in the narthex. The ushers were out there, too. The Temp began his sermon by saying that he had thought of bringing an ax with him as an illustration and walking up and down the aisles offering to cut off the hands, feet, tounges, etc., of congregation members. I said, in a normal conversational level (not shouting but not whispering either), "You come near me with an ax and you'll see what my hands can do," "...what my feet can do." When he got to the part at which he suggested lobotomies for people whose brains cause them to sin, I'd had enough. I walked over to one of the ushers, gave him my offering, and asked him to put it in the plate; I told him, in the same conversational volume, that I'd had enough, I dropped my program on the floor, and turned to leave.
A young woman who was sitting on the back pew heard all of this and came out of the sanctuary; she asked if I'd like to talk for a while. We sat on a pew that's just inside the door to the church. I told her how offensive the Temp's illustration was to someone who had been an abused child and an abused spouse and who had psychiatric illness. We talked until it was time for communion, at which time I told her I'd let her go, and I left the church. I think she must be a counselor. When she asked me who my psychiatrist was, she said she knew him and that several of her clients saw him.
I haven't said anything to the Temp because I can't stand hearing his voice. I was part of that congregation even though I was sitting outside the sanctuary, and I don't appreciate the person who is supposed to be at least a partial spiritual leader offering to mutilate me. The usher came to me while I was talking to the young counselor and told me that he'd heard the sermon at the early service and that the Temp did get around to saying that Jesus wasn't suggesting literal dismemberment, but that doesn't change what he said at the outset.
So, littermates, am I overreacting? I was, BTW, fully medicated at the time.
