This
morning I dreamed that my
twin sister was a
black preacher.
Everything else about her seems normal, she even resembles me still, but with very dark skin and some prominent African features. I am insanely jealous - she looks good.
I am sitting in the front row of what seems to be your ordinary suburban Baptist church - all white, conservative, attractive, successful and repressed as hell. I am between an elderly woman and a family busy yelling at their son. My sister approaches and says in half-family/half-clergy voice, "It is so good to see you here this morning! It's been so long since I've done any preaching, it's nice to get back behind the pulpit again." And at those words, and the realization that my sister is preaching, the old lady next to me nearly faints. A woman preaching? And a black woman at that!
My sister makes her way up to the front of the church. Noticing that something is different the entire congregation is on the edge of their pews. And then my sister begins to preach. And I mean preach! It was as if she had been hit by a lightning bolt. She's preaching about hell, Satan, Jesus, and "casting down imaginations, bringing every thought to the obedience of Christ". Talking about rivers that spring forth and of spiritual gifts and I think she lost them when she started invoking the Holy Ghost. The congregation is completely enraptured. Sure, some of them quietly exit out the back door but the ones that remain are no longer sitting quietly as they had been taught. They are not highlighting their Bibles and taking notes in the margins like college students. The children begin dancing in the aisles and even the church pianist is getting into it.
As the sermon ends, even the crotchety old lady beside me is able to muster up an "Amen, sister!" I look at her and smile.
"No," I say, "That's my sister."