The St. Michael Poker & Drinking Club

by Randle, Ned;

  The three Protestants sat unmoved, awkwardly sipping their drinks to avoid speaking, looking back and forth at each other over the tops of their cans, waiting for someone to speak.

  “As you know, Father…” Theo Swindberg finally said to the tablecloth after setting down his beer.

  “Tom.”

  “As you know, Father Tom—”

  “No, just Tom.”

  “Okay, Tom,” Theo continued, exhibiting slight irritation while looking down at the top of his beer can, “as you know, and with all due respect, our churches take a different view of games of chance than yours.”

  “Well, Theo,” Tom responded somberly, “there’s no chance involved in my poker games; I win all the money. You guys have no chance.” He took a swig of his beer and laughed coarsely at his own joke, as he was apt to do, and felt better thinking he’d made a good joke to lift the mood. He looked around the table. Metzger had a forced smile on his face, more in response to his boisterous laughter, Tom sensed, than to the joke itself. Theo sat tight-lipped and grim. Only Billy Crump offered a wry chuckle, and Tom made a mental note to keep an eye on the little Bible-thumper if they ever got into a poker game.

  “Seriously, though,” Tom continued as he warmed to the discussion, “as in all these cases there is scriptural dicta as well as a practical purpose behind any prohibited activity.” He could feel the pitch of his voice slide down into its normal octave.

  “I won’t deign to preach to the choir, as they say, but the Bible doesn’t specifically condemn gambling. As you all know, Joshua cast lots to determine the allotment of land to the various tribes of Israel. On the other hand, Christians have had a prejudice against gambling since the Centurions cast lots for Christ’s clothing. That’s the scriptural dicta, as I understand it, but I’m open to other views.”

  He paused to take a drink of beer and field comments; however, no one at the table spoke up.

  “Despite the absence of an overt prohibition against it in the Bible, I think there’s a practical reason for churches to oppose gambling,” he went on. “In my opinion, most churches are against gambling because they don’t want their congregants to wind up broke and their families ruined. That’s not good for anyone, including the church, which counts on congregant offerings to fund its business.

  “In any case, we’re grown men, not to mention men of God, and I’m certain we won’t allow the devil to infiltrate our ranks if we have a beer and play a few hands of poker. And we won’t go broke playing a nickel and dime game.”

  “Can’t we just get together to chat, without the gambling and drinking?” Theo asked. Tom noticed that the pastor usually looked down when he spoke and had an aggravating habit of avoiding eye contact when he did look up at him, focusing on the lower part of his face. Theo’s misplaced stares made Tom feel discomfited; he thought the man seemed to focus on the long, thin scar that extended from his lower lip to the cleft in his chin.

  “No one here belongs to a church that proscribes God’s gift of alcohol, does he? As for the card game, I think we need something other than ourselves and our work to focus on. I don’t want our little get-togethers to devolve into pity parties or gossip klatches.”

  “When do you propose to have these meetings, Tom?” Brian Metzger asked after setting down his beer can so he could make air quotation marks around the word “meetings” with his fingers.

  “I first thought about once a week, but then I figured if you guys are like me, you’re loaded up with meetings and other evening duties. So, I propose the Biblical fortnight.”

  Tom looked around the table and saw various aspects of diffidence in their faces. He felt as if his timeworn powers of persuasion were proving to be ineffectual with this group of men and he sensed they weren’t convinced his plan was a good idea. He began to waver himself.

  “Look,” he finally said, almost as a pis aller. “I don’t want anyone to do anything he’s uncomfortable with. Two weeks from tonight I’ll be here and ready to host a card game. I’ll have snacks and drinks. If you want to join in, I’d love to have you. If not, I certainly understand.”

  After Father Tom escorted the men upstairs and out the rectory door, he returned to the basement to pick up the empty beer and soda cans and scoop the untouched chips and pretzels back into their bags. As he swept around the table, he weighed every word spoken, every facial expression, every nuanced tone of voice. As he trudged up the steps, he felt his old anger rise, not at the men—they were fine enough fellows—but at himself for proposing such a cockamamie idea. He’d exposed himself to ridicule and chastisement by other clergymen in town, at least behind his back. Moreover, he’d walked dangerously close to the edge, close to admitting as true the underpinnings of some stubbornly held Protestant stereotypes of the priestly celibate life, which was, in the view of critics, one of the great modern-day shortcomings of the Mother Church.

  Later that night, long after the men had gone home, he felt the moral weakness of the insomniac as he was kept awake by the bright light of conflicting thoughts flashing about in his head. He finally got out of bed and walked downstairs and stood in the study, in the dark, in his pajamas sipping wine, staring out the window toward the rose garden, indiscernible in the night. A second glass of wine proved to be a soporific and he leaned forward against the window sash, his eyelids drooping, the thoughts in his head reduced to sputtering match heads. He cursed the waning heat of his ire; he cursed the dead cat for getting itself killed; he cursed himself for his weakness, and he cursed the other clergymen for their polite disinterest, and in the middle of his stream of curses, he cursed the whole goddamned idea and hoped no one showed up in a fortnight so the embarrassing affair could, in due time, be forgotten.

  Chapter Four

  The Reverend Theo Swindberg also had conflicting feelings as he entered the parsonage upon his return from the gathering at the priest’s house. His wife Naomi, feeling poorly of late, was in bed reading when he opened the bedroom door to wish her good night. He could tell from her tight-lipped smile she was again feeling the aggravating pain in her belly, but he decided against admonishing her for not seeing a doctor. He told her he’d be in in a bit and if she were still awake, they could recite their bedtime prayers. He gently closed the door and walked to the parlor to sort out his feelings.

  He sat in his reading chair and turned on the table light. He silently prayed for guidance and then began consideration of Father Tom’s proposal. As the principal pastor of St. Paul’s, he was responsible for setting an example of righteousness and adherence to church principles and rules. He was well aware of the Synod’s proscriptions against most forms of ecumenism, yet the hard and fast rules offered little guidance in this situation, and consequently, he felt unsettled.

  Casting the proposed bi-weekly meeting in a light most favorable to his participation, he acknowledged that Father Tom had not proposed a prayer group; he’d proposed a social group, a men’s club, with its intended purpose simply being comradery and fun. The proposal, as it was, was both innocuous and appealing, even when measured against Synodical practices and prohibitions. Moreover, he found the idea of making some friends intriguing. Oddly, of the three other clergymen at the meeting, two were Protestant, yet he found Father Tom, the Roman Catholic, to have the more compelling personality, a straightforward and manful presence unlike the haughty and scheming caricatures of Catholic priests that had been foisted on him by his father, by his father’s pastoral friends, and by a few old professors at the Lutheran seminary. He found the priest modest, self-effacing, and open. To Theo, Father Tom Abernathy seemed worldly in a way other clergymen were not, as if he were imbued with a sublunary sense that informed his interactions with other men. And his rugged face was scarred, yet kindly. The priest smiled broadly and laughed loudly, characteristics Theo admired in others but were antipodal to himself.

  Theo thought these things about Father Tom and blushed even t
hough he was alone in the parlor. He was glad Naomi was in bed and couldn’t discern his thoughts, as she often could, or see the color in his face. In truth, he was embarrassed; he had spent only a brief time in the priest’s presence and yet had impetuous imaginings about the man and his makeup. Nevertheless, he sensed at the gathering the priest was a good man, and when he honestly examined his feelings alone in the sanctuary of his parlor, he admitted the priest had a certain charisma he found discomfiting.

  Theo went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of Sanka in the microwave. At Naomi’s insistence, he only drank Sanka after dinner; she was worried caffeine would keep him awake. He carried the cup on a saucer, with a spoon and small cream pitcher back to the parlor and sat in his chair and stirred cream into the coffee as he again wrestled with the priest’s proposal. He’d hoped by getting up and moving about the house he could change his perspective on Father Tom and address his personal concerns with greater objectivity. Based upon his theological and familial background, he couldn’t help but consider the priest’s motives suspect when he first listened to the message of invitation on St. Paul’s answering machine last week and now, as he sat sipping his coffee, he tried to return to that more skeptical and more comfortable frame of mind.

  From the time he was young, he’d been tacitly or directly informed that Catholic priests were, in many ways, superficial in their faith and that they engaged in excessive ceremony to cover up a shallow understanding of the true message of the Gospels, such as salvation through faith in Christ’s forgiving grace, alone, without works. It was implied the Catholic Church placed inordinate importance on works as a means of salvation in order to hold its members in a form of chattel slavery. He was taught that priests and other Catholic Church hierarchy hawkishly promoted church strictures and Papal Edicts more for pecuniary purposes than for the benefit of parishioner souls.

  As he blew into the cup to cool his coffee he gave full rein to this cynicism. He dredged up a convenient anti-Catholic saw—the strict requirement of parishioners to attend Mass every Sunday under the threat of banishment of their souls to a mythical Purgatory for eons. He believed the stricture was not so much a coercive injunction to honor the Sabbath as a disingenuous requirement to keep the sheep in the fold and cash in the coffers. There were other prejudices—the Immaculate Conception and the perpetual virginity of Mary, priestly celibacy, the salutary intervention of dead saints—which rose like fingerprints on the surface of his mind. But as he contemplated the Catholic conceits which stalwart Protestants viewed as hokum, he asked himself, what, in all honesty, does all this malignity have to do with Father Tom Abernathy and his idea for a poker club?

  Almost nothing, he had to admit.

  So, what was Father Tom’s motive in arranging a gathering of clergymen of different traditions to play cards and drink beer? How did it align with Roman Catholic dogma? At least as he understood it. It was hard to tell. It seemed Metzger, Crump and he himself had little to offer the priest except company. And perhaps Father Tom was sincere; perhaps he was, as he confessed, simply lonely in his office with few options for social interaction. That was something Theo could understand, even as a married man.

  Over the last few years, he and Naomi had subtly and quietly drifted apart, and he knew between the two of them, he was more to blame. Some of that blame rested with his inability to father a child, he knew, and the acknowledgment of his blame cut him like a knife. He had, he felt, denied her the greatest gift in life. As a result, it was just the two of them and not a family, and in many ways the obsessive weight of two, alone, wearied them both.

  On occasion, he thought he could see in her eyes that she was sorely disappointed by her situation, disappointed with him. Yet, they maintained appearances and remained effective collaborators in management of the church. His wife treated him respectfully and kindly, true to her wont, and despite performing all her wifely duties, she was not as warm as she had been in the early years of their marriage. Consequently, he had grown lonely in what he finally admitted was feckless husbandry, and now, sipping hot coffee alone in his parlor, he admitted his awkward relationship with his wife was another reason Father Tom Abernathy’s idea for a men’s club appealed to him.

  But even if Father Tom’s motives were pure, and even though the idea of making friends was appealing, he still needed to figure out if joining the group was something he could do and not be in violation of church tenets. Considering his own encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible, he recognized Father Tom was accurate in his assessment of gambling, in light of the scriptures, so Theo leapt over that hurdle easily enough.

  His church didn’t recognize drinking as a sin per se. Even Martin Luther, who had the uncanny ability to find almost any human activity to be a violation of at least one Commandment, waxed philosophically about his good German beer—“Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!”—a quote downplayed by the professors at the seminary but tittered about relentlessly by the priggish first year seminarians when downing their first illicit booze, many of whom were away from home for the first time.

  Only drunkenness was condemned. The Apostle Paul warned repeatedly against drunkenness and admonished members of the church at Corinth not to keep fellowship with a member who is a drunkard. But Theo believed other letters of Paul indicated he accepted drinkers as brothers and sisters. Paul even spoke favorably of wine for medicine. And occasionally, without pangs of conscience, Theo treated himself to a glass of wine when out to dinner or to a cold beer when he barbecued on the patio, drinks he considered medicaments for his work-worn soul. Although he didn’t know the other clergymen involved, he was confident none was a drunkard, and any drinking would be minimal, just enough to demonstrate conviviality and good cheer, and certainly would not lead him or the others down the road to perdition. He concluded, after due thought, that playing cards and indulging in few drinks in the spirit of fraternity and good fun would be fine and acceptable to his church.

  With these issues resolved, he came full circle. He was back to the original question which discomfited him, the kernpunkt of his internal debate: could his participation in a group of clergymen be construed as a form of ecumenism proscribed by the rules of his Synod? Before delving into the issue, he got up and went to the kitchen and made himself another cup of Sanka. On his way back to the parlor, he pressed his ear against the bedroom door and heard Naomi softly snoring, and, assured she wouldn’t get up and ask why he wasn’t in bed, he sat down in his chair, placed his coffee on the table to cool, and picked up his Bible and his Catechism and prayed for guidance.

  Theo understood his church’s theoretical underpinnings for its refusal to participate in ecumenical activities. The refusal was not just self-righteousness and German stubbornness, although there certainly was some of those; the doctrine arose in the context of his church’s understanding of the sanctity of Holy Communion. He knew where to look for scriptural support and turned to The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, chapter 10, and read: “We insist that it is the Lord’s Table, not ours.” Furthermore, according to the Gospel of St. Matthew, Christ alone has the right to say who shall sit at His table. And finally, turning to Psalm 119, he was reminded that no amount of so-called brotherly love, ecumenical spirit, or political pressure should cause us to invite to His table those who have not complied with the requirements laid down plainly in His inspired Word.

  Ecumenism, as he understood it, was a form of communion and hence closed to those who are not right believers. Consequently, his church believed in close communion. But so did Father Tom’s. In his opinion, Metzger’s Methodists were unprincipled in handling the Lord’s Supper, and he had no idea how Billy Crump and his church approached the sacrament, or if they even recognized the sacrament at all. If they did, he assumed Crump’s approach to the Lord’s Supper was the same complacent approach Theo had hea
rd he took to the liturgy itself, a relaxed convenance composed on the fly to make his members feel good about themselves while failing to instill in them the proper dread of the inevitable reckoning over the disposition of their immortal souls.

  Recognizing this link between ecumenism and Holy Communion, Theo believed, informed one of the risk in participating in an ecumenical gathering, which was the risk of communing, at least in spirit, with those who do not properly believe to the detriment of one’s spiritual health. Theo recognized St. Paul as being outspoken in this belief and so was Martin Luther, an acolyte of St. Paul, so he turned to Luther’s Small Catechism and read the section under the heading “The Sacrament of the Altar,” but it offered little guidance. Nevertheless, he was comfortable with Paul’s instructions, and he would follow the teachings of his teacher’s teacher.

  Theo was clever enough to know his analysis begged the questions: what is a true believer, and who among the men who gathered at Father Tom’s rectory is or is not a true believer? He added cream and sipped his coffee, which now was sufficiently cooled to drink, and rationalized that he didn’t need to resolve these questions. For the purpose of his instant contemplation, he would assume they all were not. He could not read their hearts.

  He set his coffee on the side table and thumbed through the books on his lap. Assuming, as he must, the other three men are not true believers, he needed to resolve in his own mind whether the proposed gathering of clergymen was an ecumenical gathering. If it was not, he could participate. This analysis was clouded by the fact he had immediately liked Father Tom and wanted to trust him. The priest did not intimate in any way that the poker club would be a prayer group. Yet, the teaching of St. Matthew, Chapter 18, which was secure in his memory, gnawed at him. Would a group of ministers be considered two or more gathered in Christ’s name? He wanted to think not; although Christ is omnipresent, two or more clergymen gathered to play cards and drink beer certainly were not gathered in His name. He concluded, based on the limited information he had, it was quite possible his participation in the group did not violate any covenant with the Synod. But he recognized his analysis was overwrought and likely influenced by his favorable impression of the priest. He decided to give it more thought on the morrow.