A breeze slithered through the windows. A girl was holding up her phone to take a picture of Asher. Far off down the road he could hear a car passing, playing a rap song, the bass thump th-thump thumping until the ridge came between the car and the church.

“Ten years ago Luke came and told me about his struggle and asked me for my support. I reacted the way I’d been raised to: I called him an abomination. Being afraid of somebody who’s different’ll make an awful meanness come over you. I said a lot of things I’m ashamed of now.”

He felt tears on his face but didn’t wipe them away.

“We’ve got to quit this judgment!” he implored, louder than he intended, the last word caught in the height of his beseeching cry. He was surprised by the sound of himself, the release of a grief that had been living within him for years now. As instantly as the words had burst forth he saw how startled some of them were, drawing back in disbelief. He put his hand out to steady himself against the pulpit.

He dropped his head to gather himself and again caught sight of the teenaged girl holding up her phone. She was filming, he realized. Well, let her.

“All he wanted was for me to love him for who he was, and I couldn’t give it to him.” He drew in a ragged breath. “I never knew of my brother to lie. But when he told me he was born that way, I accused him of lying. I told him he had been turned over to a reprobate mind. Because I had been taught that. And I lost my brother. Not because of a choice he made, but because I chose to turn my back on him.”

He plucked his Bible up from the pulpit and held it in the air.

“You can use the Word to judge and condemn people or you can use it to love them. The day I turned Luke away, I felt that doubt pulsing inside me. Sometimes I wonder if that doubt isn’t God, giving us a little nudge.”

A couple stood up and shuffled out with their children. Caleb Carey arose, one hand up before him, signaling that Asher had said enough.

“When those two men came into this church to be part of a congregation,” Asher continued, “after a flood took everything they had, you refused to speak to them. All their lives, people have told them they’re no good, that they’re abominations, that they don’t deserve God’s love. They came here seeking it. But you couldn’t find the decency in yourself to be good to them. So I don’t want to be your pastor. You had your meeting and you fired me, but I’m here to tell you I had already quit you.”