I remember one of my first days at the University of Oregon. We all crowded
into Mac Court, home of the Duck’s Basketball Team—but we weren’t there to play
or watch basketball, we were there to hear Poet Maya Angelou speak at our
Commencement Address.
I don’t remember much of what she said, though I do remember the deep feeling
that her words caused to welled up in my heart, a feeling of possibility, a
feeling of fully leaving Wyoming behind and entering into a different world.
And I remember later reading a poem of hers written to an anonymous preacher.
And, in memory of her and as a way to think about today’s reading from the book
of Acts, I would like to read that poem to you all:
Preacher, Don't Send Me
Preacher, don't send me
when I die
to some big ghetto
in the sky
where rats eat cats
of the leopard type
and Sunday brunch
is grits and tripe.
I've known those rats
I've seen them kill
and grits I've had
would make a hill,
or maybe a mountain,
so what I need
from you on Sunday
is a different creed.
Preacher, please don't
promise me
streets of gold
and milk for free.
I stopped all milk
at four years old
and once I'm dead
I won't need gold.
I'd call a place
pure paradise
where families are loyal
and strangers are nice,
where the music is jazz
and the season is fall.
Promise me that
or nothing at all.
Such words…
she lifts up the false heavens that come so easy from the
lips of preachers—of streets of gold and milk for free, images that, when
overused or misused, are, to quote Johnny Cash, “so Heavenly Minded They’re No
Earthly Good.”
Such words…
She points us to the hell we sometimes find ourselves in,
malnourished monotony and the grim and grimy reality of giant ghetto rats.
Such words…
she anchors us in the heaven of small decent things—loyal
family, the kindness of strangers, good music, and a favorite season.
What
I want to talk to you about briefly today is witnessing to the world—witnessing to the world.
And
to get at what I mean by witness and
what I mean by world we’ll have to
look at their opposites in today’s reading, a worldly kingdom and a heaven
fixation.
Or
to break it down a little more by borrowing from Maya Angelou,
I want to talk to you about the glitter of heaven and
power,
and how the small things that give life meaning can speak
and save in this gruff world.
Let us pray.
“Is it the time when you will
restore the kingdom?”
How often we’ve
heard such words.
In the wilderness Jesus is
tempted by Satan, “just bow down to me and I’ll give you all the Kingdoms of
this world.”
The crowd at one
point seizes Jesus to crown him and make him king, and it is all he can do to
escape from them.
Counterwise, he
rides into Jerusalem on a decidedly non-regal
Donkey and when asked by Pilate if he is a king, Jesus responded mysteriously,
“It is you who say I am.”
In short, Jesus’
Kingdom is of a different type than all expect…
Yet here we are,
with the disciples again grasping at a political kingdom,
and not laying hold of one.
Instead Jesus
responds, “It’s not for you to know…” instead of a kingdom in this world Jesus
offers them an opportunity—to witness to the ends of the earth about Jesus.
To tell the whole
world that Jesus lived, died, and rose.
To tell them as well,
of the strange enthronement, the strange kind of king, that Jesus is. He’s a
king acquainted with sorrow—more than that, acquainted with our sorrow, yes, each and every one of
ours.
Witness has nothing
to do with the glitter of kingship and power.
Witness is a small
thing, a weak thing, held together by no army or castle wall, instead an open
hand, a simple story shared by word of mouth.
A weak small thing, but pure
paradise,
like a loyal family or jazz, or
anticipating fall—dying leaves and cool air—small weak things,
yet powerful, just in a different way.
So too telling that old old
story of Jesus and his love.
And then almost
immediately after Jesus tells the disciples to witness, to tell people of their
experience of him—to go out to Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria, and to all
the ends of the earth in the power of the Spirit and the strange weakness of
witnessing…
Immediately after
that comes one of my all-time favorite bible verses—Acts Chapter 1 verse 11.
These men in white,
presumably the same ones we first meet at the tomb announcing Christ’s
resurrection on Easter Sunday, wander up to these disciples all agape at the Ascension
of Jesus, and ask, “Why y’all lookin’ up?”
These heavenly beings
find the disciples’ heavenly-minded-ness to be out of place.
It’s like they’re
following Maya Angelou’s lead, “gold and milk shimmer, but aren’t something to
hold onto.”
Don’t look up, but instead look
around you—look out—you’ve been empowered to preach to the ends of the earth…
You have good news, look around you and see all those who need it.
Look to the crowded
ghettos of Jerusalem,
To the squalor the Hellenist
Widows will wallow in.
Look the giant prison rats in Philippi
and Caesarea with Paul right in their eyes,
know clearly the hunger of all
those people in Asia Minor yearning for the good news you know so well,
yes go even to Rome and to the
end of the earth, eyes open to the conditions and situations of the people who
Jesus’ Gospel has come to free.
Word and
witness—clear eyed about the world around us, but empowered by the Spirit to
act in small, sacred, and significant ways so that Christ may be known.
… That’s pure
paradise.
Amen and Alleluia.
