His Eye is On the Sparrow, the Possum, and You

If you ever visit That Church by the Vape Shop, you might notice little Tucker outside handing a turkey sandwich to a possum that he has named Lazarus.

"That's not a cat," said Brother Earl, from the shade of the awning, where he had been pretending to read a newspaper for eleven minutes without turning a page.

"I know," Tucker said. "He's emotionally complicated."

Lazarus blinked twice, unbothered, the way possums are unbothered by nearly everything.

"I think he agrees," Tucker said.

Brother Earl sighed.

"I've reached the age where I no longer argue with children about marsupials."

Velma asked him, "Why'd you call him Lazarus?"

Tucker replied, "Because every time I think he's dead, he gets back up."

Pastor Peaches came around the corner carrying three grocery bags. Pastor Peaches seemingly could produce groceries the way Elijah produced oil. He had bottled water, sandwiches, apples, socks, Band-Aids, granola bars, and enough beef jerky to survive a mild apocalypse.

Sister Velma peered into a bag like she was inspecting produce for bruising.

"Pantry running low?"

"Nope."

"Somebody moving?"

"Nope."

"You planning a camping trip you didn't tell nobody about?"

"No, Velma."

"Then why are you carrying enough to invade Nebraska? Nebraska ain’t done nothin’ to you, Peaches."

Peaches smiled.

"Somebody's gonna need it."

Earl, without looking up from his unread newspaper, said, "You know, statistically, that has worked an alarming number of times."

Fourteen minutes later (Earl checked his watch), a tired man wandered across the parking lot with two kids. One shoe had duct tape on it. One child looked hungry enough to consider eating the landscaping.

Peaches didn't ask for a testimony, request paperwork, or say let's talk about your decisions.

He just handed over the bag.

The little girl hugged it like she'd won something. Her father made it about four seconds before the crying started, and Velma developed sudden, urgent business with the horizon.

"Something in my eye," she said.

Nobody believed her. Nobody said so either.

After the family drove off, Travis strolled over rubbing his hands together, which everyone had learned to fear the way sailors fear a still sea.

Travis loved Jesus, but he also loved an argument. If theology were professional wrestling, he would enter every conversation carrying two folding chairs.

"I got a question."

Everybody groaned in stereo.

"He's found verses again," Velma muttered.

Travis ignored her, already pointing at his phone like it was a subpoena.

"Matthew 25. Jesus says people get judged on whether they fed the hungry, visited the prisoner, clothed the naked."

"Yep."

"So." He paused dramatically; he may have rehearsed in his truck. "Are we saved by works?"

A crow flew away from its perch on a nearby power line, unwilling to be involved.

Peaches lowered himself onto an upside-down pickle bucket, which functioned as his pulpit at times like this.

"Let's read it slower."

"Uh-oh," Earl said.

"What?"

"Whenever he says 'let's read it slower,' somebody's favorite doctrine's about to need a hospital visit."

"Everybody remembers the sheep and the goats," Peaches said.

Little Tucker's hand shot up like he was answering for a prize.

"The sheep are good."

"Right."

"The goats are bad."

"Right."

"Sheep get eternal life, goats don't."

"Right."

Travis nodded, satisfied. "I understand all of that completely."

"No, buddy." Peaches smiled. "You understand about six percent."

Earl opened his Bible to the crease it already knew.

"What did Jesus actually say?" asked Peaches.

Earl read aloud: "'Whatever you did for one of the least of these My brethren—'"

"Stop," Peaches said.

"That's it?"

"That's the part everybody skips right past on the way to feeling guilty."

He looked around the lot like a man setting a trap he already knew would work.

"Who are Jesus' brethren?"

There was a silence, the specific silence of people who suspect they're about to be wrong in public.

Finally, little Tucker offered, "...James?"

Velma said, "That’s right, in the biological sense. Good job! But I think Peaches means someone else…"

Earl flipped to Hebrews 2:11, already smiling. "'He is not ashamed to call them brethren.'"

"Who's them?" Peaches asked.

"Believers."

"The family of God."

"Us."

Peaches snapped his fingers like he'd been waiting all morning for that word.

"So the story of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 isn't just Jesus grading everybody on general niceness. It's the whole world being judged on how they treated His people."

Travis frowned the frown of a man watching his argument get repossessed.

"So the sheep helped Christ's people."

"Yep."

"The goats mistreated them."

"Yep."

"And Jesus took it personally."

"Extremely."

Little Tucker's eyes went wide. "So when somebody's mean to Christians—"

"They're picking a fight," Peaches said, "with our Big Brother."

Earl leaned back, arms crossed, enjoying himself now.

"You know what this reminds me of? Saul, on the road to Damascus."

"Exactly."

"Jesus didn't ask him, 'Why you bothering my church folks?'" Earl said. "He asked, 'Why are you persecuting Me?'"

The parking lot went quiet for a second, the good kind of quiet, the kind where something lands.

Velma pointed toward the road the family had disappeared down.

"So all that feeding and clothing—"

"Wasn't random charity earning Heaven," Peaches said.

"It revealed who we already love," Velma said.

"Exactly. The sheep loved Jesus, so they loved His family. The goats hated Jesus, so they hated His family."

Earl smiled. "The fruit didn't create the tree. It just told you what kind of tree you were dealing with."

"Mark 9:40-50 seems like Matthew 25 wearing a different jacket, too," Peaches said. “The way it’s divided in modern Bibles can make it seem like He’s changing the subject randomly, but taken as a whole, it’s about kindness to believers on one side and severe judgment on whoever harms us on the other. Jesus said it a few ways because He wants it to stick: the way you treat My people matters, because they're Mine."

Travis was unwilling to lose gracefully. His proverbial flabbers were gasted.

"I’m gonna need you to prove that."

Peaches grinned the grin that made Velma physically step back.

"Oh, I’d love to, Brother."

"I don't like that smile," Velma said.

"Why not?"

"Last time you smiled like that we ended up with seventeen whiteboards and a diagram with an arrow labeled 'possibly demons.'"

"That was a good diagram."

"It had a raccoon in it, Peaches."

"I stand by my work."

He flipped to Mark 9, with his thumb finding the verse before his eyes did.

"'Whoever gives you a cup of water because you belong to Christ—' Who's receiving the cup?"

"The disciples."

"Believers."

"Same family."

"Same idea," Peaches said, and kept reading. "'Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck—' Who are the little ones?"

"Believers."

"Jesus' people. The Accuser has really done a number all these years trying to scare sheep about other sheep, when it’s a lot simpler to remember that there are sheep, goats, and brothers. In Revelation, there’s a thousand years of Him (along with us) ruling this planet with an iron scepter between His return and the ending. Our Lion roars for us, not at us. He died for our sins; He’s not bringing them up again. Too many sermons make Jesus sound like He's hiding behind every bush yelling 'Gotcha!’ He remembers our sins no more. Whoever is not against us is for us, and whoever is against us is advised to remove their finger before laying it on us."

Travis’s face did the slow thing, the buffering thing. You could almost hear dial-up internet noises. 

"Oh. Oh. Oh."

Earl laughed. "There he goes."

Velma added, "Jesus ain’t trying to scare children of God into wondering if they're saved every other Tuesday, and Wednesday if attendance is low. Jesus is promising that nobody mistreats His family and gets away clean."

Peaches leaned forward on the bucket, with his elbows on his knees, and his voice dropping out of teaching mode and into something closer to a father talking to his own little ones.

"If you're in Christ, those red letters aren't aimed at making you lie awake wondering whether you're hanging onto salvation by one sweaty fingertip or desperately trying to win a rigged carnival claw machine. They're a warning to whoever's out there hurting His people, with banana peels or otherwise. And to His people, they're not a threat."

He tapped the page.

"They're comfort to the people being abused. They're a promise. You will be avenged."

Earl nodded slowly. "Kind of like in Revelation. The martyrs are under the altar, asking, 'How long, Lord?' And the answer isn't 'actually, I forgot about that.'"

"The answer is justice is coming," Peaches said. "Every single time."

Little Tucker looked thoughtful.

"So if somebody gives one of Jesus' people water, He notices."

"Yep."

"And if somebody hurts one of His people, He notices that too."

"Every time."

"So He's not trying to scare us. He's just... paying attention."

Peaches looked at the kid like he'd just out-exegeted three seminaries.

"That's the whole sermon, Tucker. You want my job?"

"Maybe someday," Tucker said. "Now, I have a possum to manage." 

"Fair," said Peaches. "Lazarus does need a lot of oversight." 

Velma shook her head, arms still crossed, but softer now.

"You know what gets me? I spent years hearing Matthew 25 preached like Jesus was saying, surprise, salvation actually hinges on whether you remembered enough canned goods. Every sermon ended with the congregation walking out scared."

"And that's the tragedy of it," Peaches said. "The finished work of Christ is supposed to leave believers confident, not checking under the bed for their own salvation. If a sermon leaves God's people thinking they're one skipped hospital visit from hell, something upstream of that sermon went badly wrong."

Travis, fully converted from opponent to fan in under ten minutes — a familiar arc — shook his head, grinning.

"It's wild. Jesus spends chapter after chapter promising eternal life to the ones who believe in Him, and then we find one warning passage and act like He forgot everything He already said a few pages ago."

"Context," Earl said, folding his newspaper. "The theological vitamin nobody wants to take."

That's when the father from earlier pulled back into the lot, with his window already down.

"Just wanted to say — my brother's taking us in. We got a place tonight."

The little girl held up her apple, half gone, half wrapped carefully in a napkin.

"I saved the rest."

Peaches nodded once. "Good."

They drove off. Nobody said anything for a minute. Even Lazarus looked reflective, which is a somewhat unsettling thing for a possum to pull off.

Finally Tucker whispered, "I think Jesus liked that."

"I know He did," Peaches said.

Velma nodded at the empty bags. "You restocking?"

Peaches picked them up. "Already got another stop."

"Who?"

He shrugged, already walking. "Don't know yet."

Then, over his shoulder, that grin again.

"But apparently He does. Don't wait up," Peaches said, already halfway to his car, "and somebody feed that possum a vegetable for once. He's not gonna get scurvy on my watch." 

And if history around That Church by the Vape Shop was any indication, somewhere down the road another hungry saint, another discouraged believer, another forgotten brother or sister in Christ was about to find out that sometimes the King sends help wearing blue jeans, carrying grocery bags, and debating theology in a parking lot next to a vape shop and a possum named Lazarus.

The Good Shepherd is watching.

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