Wednesday's Three Word Wednesday

The words over at Three Word Wednesday are amaze, frail and sacred. Somewhere, there's a better story in this than what came out.

Street Prophet
For all his craziness, he didn’t direct his gestured outbursts at those who passed on the street, but into a mobile smartphone.
Curious onlookers stole sideward glances. He wore the obvious cloak of homelessness: The scruff of a beard gone to wild seed, two pair of pants, a dirty coat, white plastic shopping sacks wrapped around cheap high-top basketball shoes.
A camouflaged backpack hung from frail, hollow shoulders. Its weight served to press him forever forward in an awkward hunch.
And the stench, it arrived well before he did - old beer sweat, urine, cigarette smoke - something else more sinister, like ripe cheese that’s filtered through an unseasonably hot day next to garbage cans.
He barked orders into the phone, to the amazement of those who parted, watching this wretched wreck use his left hand to drive home the points he was making into the phone.
He spoke in Aramaic, the sacred language of Christ and his Disciples. Not that those on the street knew it; to them it sounded old, foreign, guttural. A troubled man in troubled times.
He made a final plea into the handset, flicked a button with his thumb, hooked the mobile to a plastic holster on his belt.
He threw a cocked thumb into a nostril, blew a wad of snot onto the street and wiped his nose with his thumb and index finger. Moving toward the middle of a busy street corner, he fished for a torn cardboard sign from inside his jacket and unfolded it.
“Those Who Follow Are Saved” it read, scrawled in red crayon.
Those who passed gave him a wide berth, hurried the cadence of their steps.
The mobile rang and he smiled.
“I’ve got to take this,” he whispered to no one in particular.