On top of these other reasons she had never heard of a woman preacher before and was keen to know what she would have to say that might be different from what the other preachers promised and claimed about the state of the world.
Merian had never had much use for any of them and told her it would be the same as the rest, only set in a woman’s mouth instead of a man’s. “You might think its something different on account of the novelty, but I wager there won’t be anything new in it.”
“Since when have you been listening to so many preachers as to be an expert?” Sanne challenged. “Anyway, what’s different is that it is a woman. That itself is something new, in my mouth anyhow.”
In the end it was this that compelled all of them to get out of bed before the sun that Sunday, to get good seats under the tent, which had been pitched in the middle of a muddy field for what had been promoted in the area as a Revival and Awakening.
As the four Merians looked around, they were surprised both by the number of people who had come out for the event and the general number that lived within walking or riding distance of Stonehouses. It was perhaps a hundred fifty souls, but all gathered together they seemed legion. Their own seats were midway back, and they could see very clearly when the first preacher, the Englishman Magnus and Purchase had played cards with at the roadhouse, came onstage. He was dressed smartly in a purple robe, with golden thread at the sleeves and a red sash he wore over his neck, along with a great golden cross.
“I want to talk to all of you today about the Knowledge and Love of God,” he said, “and how it belongs to all of us in equal measure. It is a message that will not be popular with some, so let me first give you my background and how I came to be here today.”
The tent was silent as they listened, for he spoke with intense care for his words, but also with a strange accent.
“I am what is known as an Episcopi Vagantes, which means I have been fully invested with the sacraments of the one original church. I received my ordination first as a priest, while still in my youth, and was raised still young to bishop — I was twenty-six at the time — by no less a vassal of God than the Pope of Antioch.
“None can undo what a Pope has done without undoing the ancient communion of the church itself, so I remain now a high bishop but have had an argument with the other churches on your behalf.
“I can see some of you are saying, He is still the Pope’s man, and what do you mean with this lowercase and uppercase pope business? Isn’t there only one? The truth is there are five popes, all equally entitled to the claim, and the Roman pope is little more than a bishop who has gotten pretensions to be master of the world. The more haughty he has got, the more he has separated all of us from the works of Jesus and His apostles.
“Why he does this is because there are things in the Gospels that the Church in Rome would rather bar all of us from knowing. But all of it belongs ever to the flock of the faithful.
“‘Now what is this Knowledge he keeps talking about?’ I can see you asking. ‘Isn’t Jesus the perfection of Love and all of Love?’ Yes, He is, but also other things besides.
“You see, the seventh seal has long been breeched, and it is silent in Heaven as They watch.”
The residents of the town were baffled by much that the preacher was saying, but he put up such a show with that great purple robe billowing out on the wind under the perfect cerulean autumn sky, along with the red coronation stole, that they decided to let him finish his sermon before making up their minds.
“Today I wish to read to you from one of the Hidden Books of Christ, which the popes and high bishops have all conspired among themselves to keep out of your knowing, certain Knowledge they would like to keep hidden in order to elevate their own earthly kingdom. I am here to tell you that you can know the True Heart of Christ, as intimately as those apostles who sat down with Him in Communion, and not go supplicating to any interdicting authority other than your own hearts.”
He opened a gigantic old tome, turned to a well-marked page, and began reading.
“Mary Magdalene said to Him, ‘Lord, then how will we know that?’
“The perfect Savior said, ‘Come you from invisible things to the end of those that are visible, and the very emanation of Thought will reveal to you how faith in those things that are not visible was found in those that are visible, that belong to the unbegotten Father. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear!’”
“What Jesus means by this,” the preacher went on, “is that God’s bounty is available to us all without interference. He will create each of you a prince of your own Destiny, but you must first sabbitise your belief, and the joy that comes from knowing, and the sharing of Bread with the College of the Faithful. You must be born and weep in the jubilation that is Christ and, through Him, receive the Hidden Knowledge that will sanctify all your works. For only then will He reveal to you the Truth.
“As proof of this I offer my assistant minister, Mary Josepha, who has been ordained by God with the power of healing, even though she was nothing but a common maid before He sought her out as His servant.”
The woman whom Purchase had met earlier that summer then took the podium, and she was as beautiful as he remembered her, even a in her vestments of office, which were a purple robe like the other preacher’s and, in place of the stole, a garter of different-colored glass beads, which caught the light as she moved to the lectern.
“When I first met her she prayed to strange gods and spoke of an oracle called the Aro Chukwu and places with untamed names, where the weaker of her people took shelter from the stronger because they did not have God’s knowledge to protect them. But since she found Christ she hides from no one and needs no other strength. As proof I invite any of you with an ailment, any seeking relief, to come up here and let Sister Mary Josepha put her hands on you so that you might be healed. You must hurry, though, because there is, as John teaches, but half an hour left.”
There was a great clamoring among the audience and many people stood to receive her blessing, even some who were devout in the normal church. The Merians sitting there all felt something stir in them as well, as the Englishman began a chanting behind the woman.
When the preacher spoke, Merian thought he could remember things he did not remember and closed his eyes, seeking to pin down those elusive flickerings. He was also reminded of the stranger he had met that dark winter day years ago, who prophesied the end of unions when it was still barren woodlands around him.
Magnus remembered then how he was once called something else, and that there was a truth about him he could no longer possess but had died with his African mother.
Sanne, when she saw the woman standing there in the office of preacher and healer, felt a great pride that all but the church fathers were going to get blessed by her, and that she had in her the power to make them defer, and that she very obviously did not wear the yoke of the household. It was an affirmation for her that was not religious but was powerful all the same.