Am I to Become an Outlaw?

Acts 18:1-4 (RSV) ¹ After this he left Athens and went to Corinth. ² And he found a Jew named Aq'uila, a native of Pontus, lately come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them; ³ and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them, and they worked, for by trade they were tentmakers. ⁴ And he argued in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded Jews and Greeks.

Paul earned a living by the practice of a skilled trade. He was a tentmaker. Since tents were made from animal hides, that made him, generally, a leather craftsman. Paul had heard of Priscilla and her husband Aquila. Not only were they co-laborers in the work of the Kingdom, they were also co-laborers in same skilled trade. What we do to make a living does not necessarily define our essential character. Paul made tents but he was not a tentmaker in his heart. In his heart he was an Apostle of his Lord, Jesus Christ.

I just finish reading an account of the rise and fall of Clyde Barrows and Bonnie Parker. As most of you will recall, they were infamous criminal partners who robbed banks and a variety of small business for a couple years in the 1930’s before they met their demise in a “hail of bullets.” This ambush happened less than twenty miles from where I am sitting. The father a fellow gang member flagged down the car driven by Clyde, with Bonnie as his passenger. As soon as they stopped the car and got out, this man ran for cover a task force of local police, sheriffs, LA state police, an ex-Texas ranger, and members of the FBI opened fire. About a hundred rounds were fired. The mortician from Ruston reported that about fifteen found their target entering Clyde but more entered Bonnie as she laid across Clyde in a futile attempt to shield him from further injury.

Clyde’s parents, Henry and Cumie, were poor but honest people who made the best life they could for themselves and their seven children. They were Baptists and attended worship weekly. They were Christians and lived under the discipline of the lordship of Jesus. This was their identity. His sister reported that Clyde was “saved” at age fourteen and then baptized.

When the cotton market literally dried up in east Texas the family loaded up their meager possessions moving around to find any place to make a living. Finally they gave up being farmers and moved to the Dallas area to become trash pickers. They settled in a camp on the west of the Trinity River. The family slept under the wagon for years till Henry had gathered enough strap lumber to build a one room shack. Every day Henry took his wagon into Dallas looking for any scraps he could sell. What he earned fed them for one more day. His only goal in life was survival; his identity was as a Christian father and husband.

Clyde’s life of crime began by stealing chickens. He ate them or sold them. As he grew so did the level of his larceny. His stories to Cumie about the where he got the chickens were difficult to believe. Henry and Cumie knew that Clyde was in trouble but they questioned him only in a most cursory manner. Theft was a way of life for many of the boys living in the poorest conditions imaginable. Clyde became a thief – that was his core identity.

Bonnie Parker’s family lost their middle class status and was forced to live on the edge of the same West Dallas neighborhood as Clyde’s family. Her mother never missed an opportunity to put her in front of an audience to sing or recite some piece of literature. Bonnie aspired to become an actress on Broadway and a published poet. Instead she waited tables and, it is likely, she sold her body to supplement her honest labors. She seemed addicted to avoiding the mundane life. She wanted to be more than common. This was what attracted her to Clyde. He was exciting and anything but common. Clyde and Bonnie lived for themselves in an idolatrous romance of mutual worship. They each had a sense of being privileged beyond the average person.

I am not sure why I read this book. But in so doing I encountered the lives of these two criminals who had lived in profound poverty but refused to accept being poor or even being average as their place in life. Clyde’s parents loved Jesus and tried to live in a way that honored him. Like Paul, their identity was “hidden in Christ.” Bonnie and Clyde were outlaws. They defined themselves as such. They lived life in order to rob banks, steal automobiles, and pillage mom and pop grocery stores. That was not simply what they did, it was who they were.

I have been thinking quite a bit on what I do and how it defines who I am. What would I be if I were not a pastor? Well, naturally, I would be a “former pastor” or a “retired pastor.” That title, itself, defines what I am not.

To be retired says I am not a pastor. So, it cannot then speak to what I am; only what I was. I may or may not even continue to be a minister member of a presbytery. I am ordained as a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA) but that is on behalf of the Church catholic. 

Since I oppose the ordination of homosexuals and thereby do not recognize their status as ordained, my status of being ordained might be revoked – and rightfully so. To refuse to recognize a fellow minister as a fellow minister violates one our vows of ordination. There is soon coming a day, when my very presence in the PC(USA) might be ended either by my act of conscience or by the action of a presbytery who will find folks like me to be unkind and cruel sinners only worthy of expulsion.

Maybe, I could become an outlaw preacher? I might literally perish on a lonely road in Louisiana just as Bonnie and Clyde did. Not by a hail of bullets but what legal projectiles just as deadly.

I can’t get Paul’s words out of my mind, where he says, “it does not yet appear what we shall be.” What am I, and what shall I become? I hope to be like Henry and Cummie. Whether they picked cotton or picked trash, they did so in order to reflect the glory of the One who called out of darkness and into the light. Lord, may I become just as simple as that.