Free Terrorist by John Updike

—and Moses and Aaron betrayed Him by letting themselves be swayed, as politicians do when the polls come in—pollsters and spokesmen, they had them even then, in
    the days of the Bible—and for diat they were held back from the Promised Land, Moses and Aaron left there on that mountain looking over into the land of Canaan like children with their faces pressed to the window of the candy store. They couldn't pass through. They were impure. They hadn't measured up. They didn't let the Lord act through them. They had good human intentions, but they didn't trust enough in the Lord. The Lord is trustworthy. He says He'll do the impossible, He'll do it, don't tell Him He can't."
    Ahmad finds himself getting excited along with the rest of the congregation, which is stirring and murmuring, relaxing from straining to follow every turn in the sermon, even the little pigtailed girls in the pew beside him, switching their heads back and forth as if to ease a pain in their necks, one of them looking up into Ahmad's face like a bug-eyed dog wondering if this human being is worth begging at. Her eyes shine as if reflecting a treasure she has spotted within him.
    "Faith, " the preacher is proclaiming in a voice roughened by oratory, gritty like coffee overloaded with sugar. "They didn't have faith. That is why they were an evil congregation. That is why the Israelites were visited by pestilence and shame and defeat in battle. Abraham, the father of the tribe, had faith when he lifted up his knife to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Jonah had faith in the belly of the whale. Daniel had faith in the lion's den. Jesus on the cross had faith—he asked the Lord why He had abandoned him but then in the next breath he turned to the thief on the cross next to him and promised that man, that evil man, that 'hardened criminal,' as the sociologists say, that that very day he would dwell with him in Paradise. Martin Luther King had faith on the Mall in Washington, and in that hotel in Memphis where James Earl Ray martyred Reverend King—he had gone diere to
    support the striking sanitation workers, the lowest of the low, the untouchables that haul our trash. Rosa Parks had faith in that bus in Montgomery, Alabama." The preacher's body leans out, growing taller, and his voice changes tune as a new thought strikes him. "She took a seat in the front of the bus," he says at conversational pitch. "That's what the Israelites didn't do. They were afraid to sit at the front of the bus. The Lord said to them, 'There it is, right behind the driver, the land of Canaan full of milk and honey, that seat's for you,' and they said, 'No thanks, Lord, we like it at the back of the bus. We have a little game of craps going, we have our little pint of Four Roses to pass around, we have our little crack pipe, our heroin needle, we have our underage crackhead girlfriends to bear our illegitimate children that we can leave in a shoebox at the disposal and recycling facility on the edge of town—don't send us up that hill, Lord. We no match for those giants. We no match for Bull Connor and his police dogs. We'll just stay in the back of the bus. It's nice and dark there. It's cozy' " He returns to his own voice and says, "Don't be like them, brothers and sisters. Tell me what you need."
    "Faith," a few voices weakly offer, uncertain.
    "Let me hear it again, louder. What do we all need?"
    "Faith, " comes the more unified reply. Even Ahmad pronounces the word, but so no one can hear, except the little girl next to him.
    "Better, but not loud enough. What do we have, brothers and sisters?"
    "Faith!"
    "Faith in what? Let me hear it so those Canaanites quake in their big goatskin boots!"
    "Faith in the Lord!"
    "Yes, oh yes," individual voices add. A few women here and there are sobbing. The mother, still young and comely, in Ahmad's pew has gleaming cheeks, he sees.
    The preacher is not quite done with them. "The Lord of who?" he asks, answering himself with an excitement