NRA: One thing I have learned

Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist; pp. 311-313

For the rest of Chapter 15, we’re stuck in church, reading about the interminable memorial service for the Rev. Bruce Barnes. It could be worse. We could be stuck in an actual church, actually having to sit through a service like this.

At precisely ten o’clock, just the way (Buck thought) a pilot would do it, Rayford and one other elder emerged from the door at the side of the platform.

Jerry Jenkins never tires of reminding us that Rayford Steele is a pilot. Jenkins seems to think of this as the defining aspect of Rayford’s character. This is what we need to know, first and foremost, about this man: He’s a pilot. This is so heavy-handed throughout the series that we start to imagine Rayford introducing himself to strangers by saying “This is your captain speaking.” We imagine that even his pajamas have gold braided epaulets.

In Jenkins’ mind, this pilot business seems intended to make us think of Rayford as something like Chuck Yeager — a test pilot, or a fighter pilot, maybe even an astronaut. He doesn’t seem to realize that constantly reminding us that Rayford is a commercial airline pilot carries a different set of connotations — and that on-the-dot punctuality really isn’t something most of us associate with commercial air travel.

Captain Rayford is, of course, the featured speaker for this memorial service, while this “other elder” is just the opening act. We’re never told his name, but I suppose that’s appropriate, since we’re seeing all this unfold from either Rayford’s or Buck’s perspective, and neither of them knows or cares to learn the names of anybody here at New Hope Village Church.

Rayford sat while the other man stepped to the pulpit and motioned that all should rise. He led the congregation in two hymns sung so slowly and quietly and with such meaning that Buck could barely get the words out.

Which hymns would those be? The slow, quiet ones. You know, the slow, quiet, and really, really, like, meaningful ones. Our family had a running joke watching Little House on the Prairie when I was a kid because whenever the townspeople sang in church, it always seemed to be “Bringing in the Sheaves.” That was laughable, but it was still better than Jerry Jenkins’ approach of never letting readers know what the folks at NHVC are singing.

What would these folks sing at a funeral or memorial service? I’m imagining a slowed-down rendition of “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” transposed into a mournful minor key to acknowledge that the roll has already been called up yonder and they’re not there.

When the songs had concluded, the elder said, “That is the extent of our preliminary service. There will be no offering today. There will be no announcements today. All meetings will resume next Sunday, as scheduled. This memorial service is in memory of our dear departed pastor, Bruce Barnes.”

Then, after the no-announcements announcement, and the announcement about next week’s meetings that he snuck in right after that:

He proceeded to tell when and where Bruce was born and when and where he died. “He was preceded by his wife, a daughter, and two sons, who were raptured with the church. Our speaker this morning is Elder Rayford Steele, a member of the congregation since just after the Rapture. He was a friend and confidant of Bruce. He will deliver the eulogy and a brief message. You may come back at 4:00 p.m. for a viewing if you wish.”

The congregation now knows “when and where Bruce was born,” which is more than we readers will ever know. But, like us, they’ll never learn the names of Bruce’s wife and children.

Oh, and nice job, Other Elder, sneaking yet another announcement in there at the end.

So now it’s quite a bit after 10 o’clock and, just the way (I think) a commercial airline pilot would do it, Rayford is finally ready to get going. As he walks to the platform, though, the whole just-like-a-pilot thing becomes worrisome:

Rayford felt as if he were floating in another dimension. He had heard his name and knew well what they were about that morning. Was this a mental defense mechanism? Was God allowing him to set aside his grief and his emotions so he could speak clearly? That was all he could imagine. Were his emotions to overcome him, there would be no way he could speak.

I’m guessing this didn’t come up in his job interviews at Pan-Continental: “Sometimes I feel like I’m floating in another dimension. It’s a mental defense mechanism that keeps me from being overcome by emotion and shutting down. God does this for me.” Maybe not quite what you’re hoping to hear from a prospective pilot.

“Members and friends of New Hope Village Church,” he began, “and relatives and friends of Bruce Barnes, I greet you today in the matchless name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

“If there is one thing I have learned out there in the world, it is that a speaker should never apologize for himself. Allow me to break that rule first and get it out of the way, because I know that despite how close Bruce and I were, this is not about me. In fact, Bruce would tell you, it’s not about him either. It’s about Jesus.”

If there’s one thing I have learned out there in the church, it’s that a speaker should never humblebrag about himself by saying “This is not about me. … It’s about Jesus.” If it were “about Jesus,” then the speaker should’ve already started talking about Jesus by now. And since he hasn’t, you can bet that the next good chunk of what he has to say won’t be about Jesus either, but about him.

“I need to tell you that I’m up here this morning not as an elder, not as a parishioner, and certainly not as a preacher. Speaking is not my gift. No one has even suggested that I might replace Bruce here. …”

Well, someone seems to have just suggested that. And someone also seems to maybe be a bit offended and insulted that nobody else beat him to it because, obviously — hello? — elder, leader, senior male member of the inner-inner-circle, pilot … who better to captain the congregation than a guy whose first name is “Captain”? Granted, Rayford here assures everyone that if anyone else had suggested he replace Bruce as pastor, he would’ve turned down the invitation. But he seems a bit prickly about not having the chance to do that sooner.

Jenkins switches back to Buck’s perspective for the next chunk of Rayford’s weirdly Rayford-centric “eulogy.” Buck, for his part, is nearly as impressed with Rayford as Rayford is himself:

Buck held Chloe close, as much for his own comfort as for hers. He felt for Rayford. This had to be so hard. He was impressed with Rayford’s ability to be articulate in this situation. He himself would have been blubbering, he knew.

Rayford was saying, “I want to tell you how I first met Bruce, because I know that many of you met him in much the same way.”

That’s not a bad start. “I first met so-and-so …” stories recounting first and lasting impressions are a thing we humans often recall when remembering or honoring our friends. We tell such stories in eulogies, in wedding toasts, in presentations of lifetime achievement awards. But we tend to keep the focus of such stories on the person being eulogized or honored, and that’s not what Rayford does here for the next full page. He tells a story about Rayford. Bruce shows up in that story, briefly, but it’s not about Bruce. And it’s not about Jesus, either. It’s about Captain Steele.

Buck heard the story he had heard so many times before, of Rayford’s having been warned by his wife that the Rapture was coming. When he and Chloe had been left behind and Irene and Raymie had been …

Yada yada yada. We readers have also heard this story so many times before, but that doesn’t prevent Jenkins from repeating it again here, in full, presented as Buck’s second-hand mental summary of what he’s hearing Rayford say.

This is the sort of repetitive summary that TV network executives sometimes require from serialized dramas because they’re worried that the shows won’t be accessible to new viewers who haven’t been watching ever since the series premiere. It’s odd to find such a summary here, 300+ pages into the third book of this series. I suppose though that in the unlikely event that someone who never read the first two books has decided to open this one to Chapter 15 and start reading there, Jenkins has got them covered. They’ll be all caught up by the end of page 313.

This rehash of Rayford’s personal testimony turns out to be the full extent of his “eulogy” for the Rev. Bruce Barnes. From here, Rayford segues into an evangelistic sermon, laying out God’s “simple plan” and “the way of salvation.” We’ll look at that next, but for now let’s just point out that Rayford’s presentation of this gospel has nothing to do with the Rev. Bruce Barnes. And nothing to do with Jesus, either.