The Year of Preacher, or How I Came to Love the Lord

Dedicated to Garth Ennis, with thanks.

Preacher came into my life in December of 2022. I was at the gym, looking for something to watch while doing cardio. The show had been on my Hulu watch list for ages and I hit play knowing literally nothing about the show. Flash forward, three months later, I had read the entire series (as well as The Boys and a million other Garth Ennis comics) and bought my first single issue from the now-closed JHU Comics. A year later, I’ve made great progress on my collection and have had some amazing conversations with shop guys around the country¹

Like Master and Margarita, Preacher landed for me just right, just when I needed it. Slowly but surely making my way back into Catholicism, but also a transgender, anti-authoritarian, shrimp lover, I was having some trouble. I had some questions. Often angry at God, confused and sometimes hurt, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I had just finished reading the Bible and was actively upset at Paul, and at the story of Job, and the generations of Jews punished for the sins of their fathers. I couldn’t understand how God could love all his children, except the ones that pissed Him off. 

Enter Jesse Custer, small Texas town preacher, hottie and former baddie. He’s bestowed with a heavenly power called Genesis, the child of an angel and a demon, who grants Jesse the power to command anyone around him to do his will. 

Genesis looks like this. 

Genesis feels like this.

Jesse, reunited with the love of his life Tulip, and united with a new best friend vampire Cassidy, the three embark upon a quest to understand Genesis, find God, and kick his ass. A quest to hold him accountable for all the shit through the ages. In the process, they encounter random killers, more vampires, a Christian death cult called The Grail, and so much more. There is a lot of swearing, a lot of cursing, and plenty of sex. Enough to thrill the teenage boy in me but all cased in a story about faith and one man’s struggle with it, and how that struggle affects those that love him the most. 

But enough about Jesse, let’s talk about me. That will help set the stage, document some stories, and eventually prove a point. 

My parents divorced shortly after I was born. As I understand it, it was requested/demanded/suggested that we be raised Catholic, so we were. I have pictures of my first communion and sort of remember taking tests for confirmation but maybe that was also for communion? I don’t remember being confirmed (per church records I didn’t pick a confirmation name). I wonder if I even was confirmed and if I wasn’t, am I really a Catholic? Perhaps that’s just wishful wondering, an easy way out from all the questions I have about church doctrine and what I do and or should believe and if I’m going to hell. 

I remember praying a lot as a kid and feeling it getting nowhere (in the way all children do I suspect). God wasn’t direct; he wasn’t making my dad move back to my home state or making the coffee brandy disappear. And so, I started to give up. When I was in middle school, a friend made a choice to leave the church, which I thought was very brave. I didn’t know what this meant but it seemed powerful. 

Despite that early cynicism, in the 7th grade, I befriended Megan who was the daughter of a preacher in a Berean Baptist church. I went to church with her once and was confused that there was no Eucharist and she told me they only did that once a month. Weirdos. But mostly, we did youth group and bible study. When I was little, we got pulled out of homily for baby bible study but we’d never not gone to church and hung out as teens instead. We’d go play downtown, or meet in the fields and goof off and once get a kiss really fast on the lips from a boy I thought was cute. 

Despite not actually doing religious stuff on the regular, the most powerful religious experience I’ve ever had was being saved. Our grown up youth group leader gave me a pamphlet, probably with John 3:16, etc. I remember whatever the tract was didn’t have a holy supper and the grown up said “I thought about that” when I asked. Megan took me down to the basement once, or maybe the basement came later, and told me about Jesus. How he cared about ME, and how we sacrificed himself for ME, and that *I* could be forgiven because of Him. I remember crying. I remember thinking no one had ever done anything to protect me but here was a stranger from thousands of years ago who cared about keeping me safe. 13-14 years old, so sad, so lonely. The same grown up asked me some time later if I was ready to accept Jesus Christ and I said yes through tears. 

I stopped going when another kid said other religions were stupid. Honestly, that was all it took to break the spell of Christ’s love. 

And at some point I figured (again, more, differently, more grown up-ly) God hadn’t done anything for me. He hadn’t healed my parents, he hadn’t stopped the hurt and the pain I was feeling. He didn’t intercede directly and show me his love. Not a new sentiment, certainly. How many of us desperate, suicidal teens grew angry at the only figure in our lives who had nothing to do but protect us? Where was OUR shield? What was OUR faith even for? Probably I was just angry at my dad but my anger was BIG so it got directed straight up. I started reading books on Buddhism. Eventually I found honors bands, and track & field, and went to college and joined the marching band. Community replaced faith and for a time, that’s all I needed.

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I was home with only one part time job instead of two (first time since I started working at 14). I coached track in the evenings for a couple hours with one all-day track meet a week. With no homework, and all my (few) friends working during the day or who stayed at college that summer, I had nothing to do except waste away. I’d read in our hammock on the lawn and look up at the sky and wish I had a house party to go to. 

I have no memory of why I decided to go back to church. I went to a Roman Catholic service, an Episcopal service, and a Unitarian Universalist service. Catholics, too serious, UU, too unserious. Episcopalians, just right. I started going to services at Syracuse and the pastor, Jennifer, brought me to the community church, just south of campus. Then she left for bigger and better and, with the exception of Christmas Mass, I never went back. But for a year or so, probably longer, every Sunday, there I was.

Over this year or so probably longer, I started writing again, fell in love. After that, I finished school, though barely. I was dirty and starving, and missing classes, and drinking too much, and hanging on by a thread. My suicidal ideations were “move to Prague and marry a bartender” and “I’ll be a cruise ship musician not a music teacher”. One day I had the urge to flush all my meds down the toilet, cold turkey, clean and clear. Dangerous and stupid but I trusted my gut and managed to survive, to eventually make it to New York, to fall in love again, save money, assuming I’d live long enough to retire.

Now, flash forward, 10 years on from then. It’s 2022, a year after my father’s death. Two years into a global pandemic. And it finally all lands on my heart. Heavy, and sticky, and sickening. All I can think about is dying. My future is nothing, a void. I stop being able to see the end of the year, or the end of next year. What my nephew might look like at prom, or what color my unborn niece’s hair will be. In September that year, I started therapy. In January of 2023, I started taking meds again. On Easter Sunday in 2022, at 7:30am, I went back to church for the first time in a decade. Somewhere between driving a stick and riding a bike, it felt normal, right, easy but with a slight strain of remembering what to do. 

The moment I fell in love with Preacher, REALLY fell in love with Preacher, was this moment. Jesse, viciously abused by his mother’s mother and her farmhands, is forced to the cloth because Granma says so. He’s telling this story to Tulip, under threat and duress, and he says this. 

In two subtle panels, not even a money shot or a dramatic page turn reveal. Two panels that somehow managed to summarize my entire lifetime’s search for God. I felt seen, heard, understood.

But Jesse had been given the power to search, and find, and fight. After Jesse finally shares his upbringing with Tulip, she’s shot point blank in the face but God brings her back, though he brings her back in order to make a demand of Jesse. 

Long live Tulip. As many times as they are separated, Jesse and Tulip find each other. An epic romance? Comic book story coincidence? Definitely. Guided by God’s hand? Definitely. In the show, the past is revealed and we see Tulip is pregnant, Jesse is joyous. They lose the baby. Jesse wants to try again, Tulip is reluctant. They try and try and try and eventually, Jesse turns back to God. 

The scene is a little longer than this clip. Before Jesse says amen the first time in this video, he says to Tulip, let’s try something different. And he prays. These moments of monotony eventually turn him back to God, even though when we meet him he’s a nervous, drunk, bar brawling preacher. I see myself in Jesse. We resent having faith. Resent asking of God, and begging, and wondering. Maybe resentment is the wrong word, but it’s the right idea. Like Constantine, he knows but he does not believe. 

Part of me knows. Knows that my life is a testimony to God’s grace. I thank him every day for staying my hand at least three times because if it had been up to me, I wouldn’t be here writing this blog. Without Him, my life would have ended by my own hand 20 years ago. This I know. Is that belief? Maybe. Is that proof of God’s existence? Not exactly, not really. But I say it now with confidence and no longer with shame or fear or hesitancy. 

The show ends with Jesse finally finding God and sending Genesis out of him and away. They sit and Jesse gets to ask his questions. He asks about child cancer and but most importantly, asks if his prayer for his father to go to hell was received. God tells him no, that prayer was declined. Jesse gets his chance (he also gets to kick God’s ass just a little). I’ve phrased it as feeling entitled to a whirlwind. Like Job, I demand accountability. And I know what I’ve been thorough isn’t even that bad. Lord knows it could have been so much worse. But I feel I deserve it. I believe I deserve it. I know I deserve it. My questions aren’t for a Father, or for a confession. They deserve to go straight up. I’d look him straight into his eyes and ask why. And if he takes one of those eyes, like he took one of Jesse’s, maybe I’ll look half as cool in an eyepatch. But until then, I pray. I ask to be kept on the right path. I ask for forgiveness and I give thanks.

1. Please do not auto-sum any of these totals. Or, if you do, keep it to yourself ^_^