#Max Way | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thegreenleavesofspring · 6 months

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I have posted this before but it's been on my mind today so here it is again. An excerpt from a future story that will probably be published, eventually.

There is a perfunctory knock on the worn old door, and Max steps inside. "Thank you for taking time to see me, Pastor."

The neat little man turns away from the desk and offers his hand. “Max. Glad to do it. Coffee?”

"No, thank you, I've already had too much today." He laughs a little and sits down.

“Well, I hope you don’t mind if I do.” The pastor pours himself a cup from the corner table and sits down in the other leather armchair and props his ankle on his knee and says, “Alright. We can small-talk for a while or just get to killin’ rats. Not many guys ask to see me the second Sunday they start comin’. Your call.” He’s got a gentle Southerner’s lilt, his voice far deeper than his trim frame would suggest.

Max bites his thumb briefly before leaning forward, clasped hands between his knees. "I only started comin' t' church recently an' I got some... hypothetical questions."

“It’s a good kind to have.” An unhurried sip of coffee.

A deep breath. "Say a family lost their dad. A big family. Couldn't make it on just th' mom working. So some of the kids... started stealing. Shoplifting an' stealin' food. Ta keep the little ones alive." He looks up from his clasped hands to meet the pastor's eyes evenly. "Say... one of 'em found Jesus, later. Grown up. An'... he couldn't repent of stealin' stuff as a kid, couldn't be sorry he had, because it was all that kept his little brothers fed some days. What... what then."

A thoughtful run of silence. “I think I might find it interestin’ to know if the finding Jesus was accompanied by repentance of other less… desperate sorts of transgressions or not.”

Max looks down at his hands again, swallowing, Adam's apple bobbing. "Yes," he says softly, hands trembling slightly. He clasps them tighter. "It would be."

“There’s that bit in the Gospels where the Lord tells them Pharisees that they like to swallow camels and strain out gnats, you familiar with it?”

This jerks Max's head back up to look at him. "No."

“Well, the idea was that the religious elite of the day would pin fussy little sins on folks with one hand. Not washing their hands enough. Working on the Sabbath. That sort of thing. And with the other hand they’d be covering up sins like adultery and murder and hatred and greed.”

"I hear stealin' is pretty far up there."

The little pastor sits back in his chair, his arms and shoulders relaxed, the coffee steaming in his hand. He says, “What does this kid think that God is like? That might be a question worth pokin’ at.”

Max's knuckles whiten. "If he thinks of Him at all, it's that He's cruel."

“And what do you think He’s like.”

A moment. "That verse about... workin' in mysterious ways."

Another sip of coffee. Listening.

Max doesn't continue.

The pastor sets his coffee down gently on the side table and stands and shuffles back to the coffee pot and rummages a moment and comes back with a plastic sleeve of Oreo cookies.

He peels open the plastic and hooks out three Oreos and sets the sleeve on the table between them and bites into the first one and chews in a mulling-over sort of way.

Max glances at it and then down at his hands again. His voice is very quiet. "Don't know what to think. Bible says He's holy, yeah? An' I know I'm not. So that... really only leaves the option’a believing. An' tryin' t’ do what He says."

“Does this hypothetical fellow think the only way he can come is if he cleans his act up first? And he doesn’t want to do it? So that means he can’t come?”

A faint furrow between red brows. "Come... to church?"

“Come to Christ.”

"...heard that Christ comes first an' cleaning the act up comes after."

“So if I’m understanding right, the… hypothetical… guy is mad at God because of what happened when he was a kid, desperate enough to steal to feed his family, and he doesn’t want to come because God is sitting in some sort of pious disapproval of the theft. Am I trackin’?”

One hand lifts as though Max is going to bite his thumb again, then drops. "Not precisely. Mad as a kid. Grew up into... acceptance I guess. Came to believe." A slow breath. "Asked... did the..." A vague gesture. "The whole... getting saved thing."

“Came to believe what, in particular?”

"That He's holy. We're all sinners an' need His blood to be saved from damnation."

“Any thoughts about what He might get up to once He does the savin’?”

"Then there's a buncha rules to follow. An' if ya do y'll be blessed. Or somethin'."

A thoughtful hum. The pastor eats another oreo. “You got kids, Max?”

"Yeah," Max responds immediately, and amends, "adopted."

“That counts. We have a coupla those, too. Boys or girls?”

A faint smile. "One boy. Allan. He's married with kids of his own now," he adds proudly.

“Good man,” the pastor chuckles. “That’s what we’re after. Tell me this. When he was little and he didn’t mind you, did you whip’im?”

Max shifts his jaw ruefully. "Didn't get him until he was eleven, and he always minded. Sweetest kid ever. I beat the he- the tarnation outta my brothers though. Growin' up. Wa'n't anyone else t' do it."

Another chuckle. “Someone’s got to. Was that one of ‘em I saw this morning? Light-haired?”

"Yep." Max's eyes drift a little in thought. "His wife'n daughter wanted t' come."

“More’n him? Brothers?”

"Five more. I'm th' eldest an' he's the third."

A long low eloquent whistle. “Seb’in boys. And you had to be daddy.”

Max shrugs.

“So… hypothetically… is the one of these fellas with the repentin’ hangup about the stealin’ the oldest one? Or a younger one.”

Max looks down at his hands again. "...th' oldest."

A low thoughtful rumble.

"There were plenny o' hungry days anyway," Max says softly, studying his hands. "The twins wouldn't'a made it if... nobody helped, we tried that first..."

“How old were you.”

"Eight."

The pastor studies his third Oreo for a while. Max steals a glance at him before dropping his eyes back to his hands.

“Do you steal to feed ‘em now?”

"No. Don't need to anymore. Big enough ta work, now," Max says bluntly. "An' they're all grown too. He- heck, Riser's got kids of his own."

The pastor nods and twists the Oreo open and sticks it back together and says to his hands, “Are you familiar with the phrase, ‘Striking a straight blow with a crooked stick’?”

Max looks up at him cautiously. "No."

“There’s a good little handful of times in Scripture where God makes sure we know He used the sinful actions of sinful men to accomplish His good purposes. The death of Christ the most striking one. Paul says that if the rulers of the age had known what God intended to do with their murderous plans—save the whole world—they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” He opens the Oreo again and sticks it back together. “But there are other less cosmic examples of the same… principle.”

Max eyes him skeptically.

“God says that taking what your neighbor has worked to produce without paying him for it is defrauding your neighbor. God also says that a man who doesn’t provide for his household is worse than a pagan.” The pastor raises his eyes to meet Max’s. “Taking what didn’t belong to you was a sin against some other man who was also trying to provide for his household. Feeding your family was not. It is possible to agree with God on the former, and praise Him that in His kindness He used it to accomplish the latter. These two things need not be in opposition to one another.”

Max drops his head into his hands, scrubbing at his face. "I don't understand."

“Son, how do you think the Lord thinks about all the rest of your sin? Right now. Your anger and your pride and the grudges you’ve carried and the women you’ve looked on, wanting to have what wasn’t yours. All of which I only know because I’m also a man, guilty of all of it, and far worse.” He tips his head, regarding Max steadily. “You say you have believed on the Lord Jesus. If this is true, then the state of all your sin must now be understood a certain way. All of it. How do you think we ought to understand it?”

Max looks up at him, puzzled. "It's filth."

“And has the Lord done anything to address the fact that it makes us filthy?”

Max gives him a look like he's not sure if the pastor is stupid or thinks he is. "That's why Jesus came."

“Good. Yes. Keep going.”

"...an' we have to believe on Him."

“Good. Max, I’m not trying to be condescending here, I’m trying to get an idea of how much you have… apprehended in your understanding of what might be happening to you, okay?”

Max eyes him. "...okay."

“Havin’ to take care of a bunch of little kids, being a father when you were still a kid yourself—that happened because someone somewhere sinned grievously against you. Whether it was your mother or your father or someone else, doesn’t matter. We don’t have to peg it down. You should never have had to be in such a strait. You know that?”

"Yes," Max says bluntly.

“There’s a passage in the Book of Romans where Paul declares there is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, have you run across that one?”

"No. Haven't gotten there yet."

“What this doesn’t mean is that sin is no longer sinful. That we somehow wave it away. There is no condemnation because the rightful condemnation for it has been laid on Christ’s shoulders instead of ours. Yes?”

"If we repent," Max insists. "It's not a blanket cover-all for those who don't want it. Gotta be accepted."

“Legally it’s true before you repent. When you got saved, did every sin you’ve ever committed or ever will come crashing down on you? One and done? Or has it been a slow revealing. Small bit at a time. A little more as you go along.”

Max's mouth tightens. "Feels like both," he grumbles.

The pastor laughs lowly. “Feels like both,” he agrees. “But one and done or bit at a time, the point remains. Repentance doesn’t mean the practice of self-flagellation. Those blows have already landed, and they didn’t land on you. Repentance means you lay it down. You set it aside, because God has done this first.” He shifts in his chair, his eyes on Max’s face. “What this also means is that we don’t actually have to bring ourselves to some sort of emotional resolution about it. If there is no condemnation, you don’t have to try and conjure up feelings of guilt for some sin in the distant past. If you’re stealing no longer, you’re already conformed to God’s will for you in this.”

Max goes silent, pondering this.

“Now, if you came to me and said, ‘Brother Tim, I’m still stealing to feed my family and I ain’t sorry a lick about it’, this conversation would probably need to be a little different in the tone.”

"No. Stopped that years ago," he says quietly.

The pastor nods slowly. “Now, when Zaccheus came to the Lord, he went and made fourfold restoration to those he had defrauded.”

"I don't even remember. Don't know that I could find them," Max says slowly.

“Well, the Lord isn’t an ignoramus about logistical impossibilities. Sometimes things come down to… would you if you could. If the opportunity came. What is the bent of your heart toward the idea.”

"If I could? Yeah."

“So when you say you can’t or won’t repent for stealing to feed your family—hypothetically of course…”

"Can't be sorry for feeding them by whatever means necessary. Hypothetically."

“You got to the parts yet when the prostitute women come to the Lord?”

"At the well?"

“That’s one of ‘em. Coupla others as you go.”

"An' He tells them to go an' sin no more."

“Yup. And there’s a better chance than none that those kinds of girls were a bit like you. Doin’ what they had to to keep someone alive. Mebbe themselves. Mebbe a kid sister somewhere, or a baby, or a parent. What He doesn’t say to them is first you gotta think about what got you here until you feel the right amount of guilt about it.” He bites the Oreo, finally, and says before he’s quite done chewing, “You know the stealing was wrong or you wouldn’t be fightin’ your head about it. You’ve already gone and stopped.”

Max lowers his face back into his hands and scrubs again and goes still and says muffledly, "Okay. I think I got it. Thank you."

“Repenting for the theft is not the same as repenting for the provision, Max. Just because they’re tangled up together doesn’t mean the Lord can’t parse them. You and I can, sitting here, a coupla ol’ Southern boys who probably didn’t finish school ‘tween the pair of us. If we can, He surely can better’n us.”

Max's hands tighten on his face, fingers tensing, but he doesn't answer that.

“Max. Son. Anyone ever told you that you did a good job? A man’s job? Anyone ever told you that?”

He doesn't emerge from his hands. "Couple times. M' uncle, for one, when he... found out what was goin' on."

“He was right. You kept those boys alive. They all still around? You still talk to ‘em?”

"All but two of us are up here visitin' Riser an' his family. Ken's got a shop an' a son back home, an' Cary stayed t' keep an eye on Mom's house."

“Y’all take care of your mama?"

"Yes," he says instantly. "She's here too – I'm sure you've seen her. Hair like mine."

“Met her briefly last Sunday, yessir.”

Max nods decisively. "We take care'f 'er."

“Good man.”

"We all love her. She did her best for us an' never stopped tryin'. Didn't drink or do drugs or anythin', just took on more work and made more time for us."

“Good woman, too.”

"She is," Max says simply.

“What about your brother, you said he has kids? More’n just the one he brought?”

"Little ones, yeah. Don't sit still. Another brother watched 'em while their parents were here."

“Well, tell ‘im they’re welcome too, I’m too old and tired to let a few squirmers bother me.”

Max grins at that. "I'll let 'em know. Maybe not right off though." The smile fades, replaced by sadness. "Say boo too loud and they'll both be gone before ya know it. Mom'n I're tryin' ta draw 'em in slow."

“Your brother’s not where you’re at yet, I take it.”

"Not even remotely." His hands drop back to hang between his knees again. "He barely made it through this morning."

That low, deep chuckle again. “Anything in particular that chapped him?”

"That would be f'r him ta say, not me."

A low laugh, a nod, and, “Well, I hope he’ll come and tell me eventually.”

"I hope so." Max stirs and sits up straight. "Thank you. You've helped."

“Don’t know about that. Nosed up in your business and told you you’re a sinner.”

A rueful half-grin. "Knew that much already," he says plainly. "You helped. Thank you." He stands, extending his hand.

The pastor stands with him and shakes it firmly. “You need to hash on anything else, you let me know. There’s a place up the road makes a half-decent barbecue, I’d buy you a sandwich next time.”

Max nods firmly, smiling a little. "I'll keep it in mind. Thank you, sir." He lets himself out.

#And the authors' commentary from where Max says he'd make amends if he could:#(Be careful saying that Max He likes to go “Really? Let's see” and put you in a situation where you CAN)#(Yes 😂😂)#Sons of the Star #SotS-adjacent #Max Way

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