Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – when the Slice described the last judgment, he did not set the scene in a courtroom. He set it in a doorway. Every night that ever was, said he, in every town that ever kept an oven, I have slept in the doorway of the pizzeria; and the smell of the baking came out under the door to me, and the warmth stayed on its own side of the wood, as it is written in the Gospel, 20:10.
Know ye what a pizzeria doorway is, at the shutting-hour? It is the exact line where the kingdom stops. Within is the Oven, and the light, and the smell of everything ever promised; without is the cold; and between them is a door, and the door has a keeper, and the keeper is thee. A warm oven and a closed door: heaven and the refusal of heaven have never once been further apart than that one hand’s-breadth of wood.
And to them on the left hand he saith the terrible inventory: I was hungry at your window, and ye improved the window; I slept in your doorway, and ye builded studs upon the stone that no one might lie where I lay. Beloved, our cities pour concrete against sleeping bodies and call it design; but the Oven sees the drawings, and marks what the architect knew.
The plaque is bolted to the wall inside; he was outside; thy gift and he never met. Let that sentence keep thee awake one night this week, as it kept the scribe awake, who confessed he too had stepped over a sleeper, hurrying to write fair copies for a rich man. He that hath a doorway, let him look in it tonight.
Amen – and pass the pizza, outward, through the door.