[lights up on PREACHER; WALKERS cross the stage ignoring PREACHER]

 

PREACHER: How are you doing today, friend?  What is your hurry?  Do you wish it was warmer, friend?  Be careful what you wish for, I know of a place where it is always hot, always burning.  Look to yourselves, look within yourselves.  Repent.  Repent and bring Jesus into your heart.  You will become greater than hot and cold.  Greater even than death.  Even the tomb couldn’t hold Jesus, such is the power and the glory of the Son of Man.  Stop friend, and listen to the Word of the Lord.  Let your heart and soul be filled with the Holy Spirit. [enter MAN] How are you today, sir?  Are you ready to open your eyes to the truth of the Word?

MAN: Your eyes to the truth of the word?  Are you read to open your eyes to the truth of the world?

PREACHER: What truth do you speak of, friend?

MAN: I speak of the truth of the coldness and the absurd and the senselessness that goes on all around us.

PREACHER: I know what you speak, brother, and I want to tell you that you have a friend in Jesus who can guide you out of this darkness.  Give Him your hand and He will show you the path to peace.

MAN: [produces a gun; points it at PREACHER; WALKERS continue without reacting] But my hands are clenched in fists of rage.

PREACHER: What are you—

MAN: And I am filled with a fury so deep that no amount of words can pacify.

PREACHER: Do you—

MAN: No words.  There will be no more words from your mortal and sinful mouth.  Pull the sliver from your brother’s eye while ignoring the plank in your own.  Have you seen your plank?  Telling me what I should do with my own eyes and my own hands and my own heart.  My own!  Not yours and certainly not God’s.  How dare you!

PREACHER: Look, can’t we just—

MAN: [strikes PREACHER with gun] Shut up!  Actions.  The only pleas I shall entertain must come from God’s own lips.  And it is God to whom you shall entrust not only your soul now, brother, but your mortal coil as well.  It is with God that you will find your salvation.  Kneel. [pause] I said kneel! [PREACHER kneels] Now pray.  I am pointing a gun at your head and I will pull the trigger, save divine intervention.  Do you think it will happen?  Do you think that the hand of God will stop the hand of this man?  I don’t know.  I’m pretty excited to find out.  I’ve never been able to be coaxed and coddled into belief, maybe today I will be forced into it.  Don’t you think that this is a little strange?  Look around you, do any of these people come to your aid against this madman?  They don’t.  I would venture to say that they should.  But they will read in the paper tomorrow about your death and they will look to each other and say what a shame it is about your death but I suppose that’s what you get for telling people they’re damned on a street corner.  That is all.  No one will remember a week from no.  No one remembers anything.  No one remembers Lazarus also rose from the dead, and those that do find no blasphemy in it.  But I am not here to teach you anything.  I am not going to judge you, I am not your jury.  I am merely your executioner.

PREACHER: You don’t—

MAN: I think the question today, brother, is Jesus a friend of yours?  I don’t know of any friends of mine that would let me die like this, alone, abandoned, without reason.  Not if they could do anything about it.

PREACHER: Please—

MAN: Time’s up.  I don’t think He’s coming.  [MAN points gun at PREACHER; WALKERS stop in unison turn to stare at MAN]

[blackout]