Defiant Imagination, Part 2: Frank Ocean's "Moon River" and Seeing Possible Worlds

As the final episode of When They See Us was coming to a close a song began to play that grabbed my attention.  It was a new arrangement and performance of an old standard.  It had been foreshadowed earlier in the episode by a recurring appearance of an unknown prison inmate ("Singing Inmate") who took every opportunity to sing "Moon River" as loudly as he could.  In those scenes, he was singing it with the powerful intonations of a golden-throated crooner.

I should include a comment on the type of writing I am doing.  I do not intend in offering my interpretation of a song's lyrics and music to be telling you what I think is in the mind of the composer.  I am not even claiming to know why the song was included as part of the movie soundtrack.  I am writing about possible meanings of the lyrics and musical structure, intertwined with the scenes of the film, and filtered through the interpretive context of my own viewing.  I'm not saying that it is arbitrarily subjective, but I am saying that interpretation of texts and films is multivalent.  The song's performer and the soundtrack composer may have different perspectives.  Yet I am analyzing musical lines, harmonic relationships, and actual words and sentences which do guide the interpretation.  So, don't take me as saying that I am offering the authoritative meaning of this song or soundtrack.  I am offering a reasonable and reasoned set of insights into a powerful creative composition of music, lyric, and film.  Now back to the song discussion.

Lena Horne, Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Pat Boone, and especially Andy Williams had made this song part of their performance repertoire.  Some artists like Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, and Eric Clapton with Beck, gave it their own twists.  "Moon River" is one of those songs that was pervasive in popular entertainment throughout my childhood, but I did not really learn the song or know much about it.  Vague memories of watching the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's suggest that I must have once known that Aubrey Hepburn sang it in the movie.  I mainly remembered the song as a standard sung by Andy Williams who was on television all the time in those days.  Beyond the opening line, I couldn't have told you the lyrics.

I think I listened carefully to the song for the first time after hearing the Frank Ocean version during the epilogue of the final episode of When They See Us.  This new cover of "Moon River" played as images of the actors faded into the actual exonerated men, with text overlays describing the current life situation of each of them.  Looking upon the bodies and faces of these boys who became men while wrongly imprisoned presses the viewer's consciousness into recounting specific events and relationships portrayed in the four-episode film, linking the visual narrative to flesh and blood.  In the context of these men's experiences of interrupted youth, injustice, and eventual exoneration to face a life so different from their plans, the song's lyrics opened up a wide space for imagination.



The song's lyrical images portray looking across a river toward what may be on the other side.  Getting across a mile-wide river is a daunting challenge, at the end of which one cannot be sure what she or he will find.  Then, the image shifts to traveling on the river, representing moving toward dreams of one's future.  The dreams are accompanied by heartbreak and the narrator's uncertainty about what's around the next bend.  As poetic imagery often does, the song starts mixing metaphors: the words speak of chasing the end of the rainbow as equivalent to flowing with the river's direction around bend after bend.  The narrator is pursuing what he or she longs for, not fully knowing what that is.

Thus the river is portrayed first as a barrier between the protagonist and the future.  Is it even possible to get across to the other side?  What will the other side bring?  Second, the river is a path upon which to journey.  The journey finds a sojourner facing an uncertain future, hoping, longing for what could be, but without assurance of what actually may appear.  And finally, the river is also the companion.  The narrator describes "two drifters off to see the world" who are "chasing after the same...rainbow's end."  The caring companions, the fellow-travelers, equally facing the unknown, sharing and bearing their hope and burden together--this may be the deepest message of the song.  If I step out into this river, it will bear me along toward its destination.  We will travel the same direction and meet the same obstacles and vistas, whatever they may be.

Ocean adapted the lyrics to his own version of the song.  It's a "crazy world" that they will see, not just "such a lot of" world.  Things won't always make sense how they turn out, but even the nonsensical is something we may find and see and experience.  With reference to the end of the rainbow, Ocean adds the phrase "chasing after" to give an even stronger sense of desire and longing.  Believing that there is something good to find, the protagonist passionately chases a dream yet not clearly formed.

He doesn't use the word "huckleberry," but says simply "my friend."  He omits there a reference in part to Mark Twain's famous character, for any number of reasons that could include the often racist language of that story from another era.

A final major lyrical change is the addition of more concrete lyrical descriptions of the formation process of one's life.  "What I see, who I become" echoes behind the lines about traveling on the river journey.  Ocean is making explicit that by joining this river journey, his life is taking a particular form through the experiences and growth specific to the river's path.  He says "Life's just around the bend."  It's not only the figment of imagination, the rainbow's end, that is around the bend.  With or without the rainbow's end, the protagonist's life will emerge from the contingent circumstances, the unanticipated relationships, and the mystery of the world encountered on the journey.  This practical language presses the viewer's mind toward the unexpected world unfolding for the exonerated men, filled with challenges and also possibilities.

The performance itself brings intellectual and emotional challenges to the listener.  The surprising opening stanza sung by a child's voice drills into the emotion of how the tragedy of this story explodes into the lives of children who went to the park one afternoon.  It's not an untrained voice, but neither is it a smoothly polished voice.  Quickly, another voice joins with harmony for a phrase--but the harmony turns out to be another melodic line in a different key, a beautiful dissonance of open harmonics.  Soon a kind of improvisational polyphony emerges as the mode in which the song progresses.  Going from solo line, to rich harmonies, to echoed motifs and improvised riffs, the performance partly deconstructs the traditional crooning ballad.

At times staggered entrances to melodic lines, fractions of beats apart, give a sense of fragmentation, a center that cannot hold, a whole that is invisible and out of reach.  These stuttering entrances and rhythms especially appear in relation to the lyrics about the uncertainty of the river's direction and destination, through heartbreak and uncertainty.  This performance itself touches a deep consciousness of the injustice and unreasonable path the young men's lives have taken.  

Yet the repeated motifs, the sense of a hopeful if uncertain destiny, are powerful themes and echoes throughout.  The polyphonic structures feed toward longer homophonic phrases of multiple layered harmonies.  Ultimately the richest, most intense harmonies and elaborate ornamentational riffs occur on the lyrics about chasing what is around the bend.  These unproven hopes, the deeply held conviction that even in a world that has been snatched away, where hopes are crushed, there is yet something worth finding up ahead.  It is a liberative theme, a recognition that the world as it is is not the world as it should be.  That better world, even if only partial and fragmented, still calls us forward.

This particular song drew me into recognizing how much a role the soundtrack had played for interpreting the film.  So I went back to review the soundtrack, making note of other songs that had projected an interpretation of the story.  In the process, I realized the way that the defiant imagination was at work in the music and the story.  "Moon River," like "What a Wonderful World," challenges the realities of a world dictated by white supremacy and white vision.  The river, always a potentially dangerous realm of currents, darkness, and hidden dangers, also represents the flow of life, the structures of how land and sea flow one into the other, the constancy of change and possibility of the new.  Ocean's interpretation recognizes both meanings, yet casts its lot with the someday, the dream, the chasing after what may and must be there for us.   Rivers have been a fruitful image to narrate the experiences of African Americans resisting oppression in the U.S.

Mavis Staples sang about lynched black bodies floating in the Mississippi River, that harsh and hateful world in which no black person is safe.  The song of lament was itself an act of defiance for putting into words and music the truth about life and death under a system of racist oppression.  Dissonant tones emphasized the incomprehensibility of such hate.  The lament ends with a call to action to "stop them from going in the river."

Other traditional songs such as "Roll, Jordan, Roll" and "Deep River" recognized the danger of a great river's treacherous current and deep waters.  Yet they also saw also great promise in the power of a river that can carry one from harsh circumstances to beauty and joy, even overwhelm an army of enemies.  They sang of a river deep and wide that marked the passageway toward relief from suffering and fulfillment in a land of peace, a true home, a welcome table, a banquet at which they were honored guests.  As we know, all such songs point not only to an afterlife, but also to a promise of goodness toward which the defiant person can strive in this lifetime.  Not only eschatological Jordan, but the Ohio River or the Detroit River as markers of emancipatory power, are part of such songs.

One of my favorite songs and another river song, Kate Campbell's "Lanterns on the Levee" has much in common with this version of "Moon River."  The coming together of two people, by Kate described as the falling rain which enters the river's flow, is again a central message.  Hardships, falls, failures, disappointments, heartbreaks, can be isolating.  They can feel as if one's very life is dissipating, dissolving.  But joined with the strength of the river's strength, that life takes on new possibilities.

You can fall like the rain
And I will be a river, winding forever,
Strong and true.
I'll carry you away to the peaceful waters...

Perhaps Campbell's lyrics possess a different degree of optimism about what may be around the bend, that it will be peaceful.  Yet the offer of shelter recognizes more storms will come, even from beyond the horizon.  The path is winding, and goes on and on toward new horizons.  What it will bring is unknown, but whatever comes will be better through solidarity among those on the journey.

"Moon River" reflects a kind of defiance which looks beyond the so-called realism of the world and sees a truth much deeper.  In a recent conversation with local artist and community leader Pierce Freelon, we discussed something he had said about "creating black spaces without asking permission."  This is part of the defiance I see in this work of art.  Recognizing that the young men who were falsely accused and wrongly incarcerated found themselves at the mercy of a world which saw them as evil, the film and song also help open one's consciousness of building possible worlds that differ from the world that powerful people seek to impose on the rest of us.

A world made for everyone cannot ultimately be hoarded and controlled by a few.  In the midst of the horrors of a world with its designs on breaking, throwing away, and killing young black men, there is yet a remainder of truth, beauty, and goodness which one can glimpse and place one's hope on, just around the bend.  Look around at all those on the journey with you.  Chase the dream with all you've got.

Tell the Truth About the Iron Teeth

This sermon was first preached in Boyd Chapel on Shaw University Divinity School's campus on Saturday, November 12, 2016.  A hermeneutical strategy I'm using here is to take a new look at the heroic figure of Daniel and the confounding images of his visions with a demystifying and humanizing lens.  What if Daniel is a young adult person not so different from us, with real world anxieties and problems as a refugee, an enslaved person from a minority ethnic group? What if Daniel is a person who has complicated vivid dreams (like my sister Jerene and my daughter Naomi), and who in addition to that receives revelation from God through some of them?  My strategy is for the listener, or you the reader, to be able to find yourself close to or even identified with the character Daniel.  Maybe it worked--you be the judge.

Daniel 7:1-20

In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream:

I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then, as I watched, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a human being; and a human mind was given to it.

Another beast appeared, a second one, that looked like a bear. It was raised up on one side, had three tusks in its mouth among its teeth and was told, “Arise, devour many bodies!” After this, as I watched, another appeared, like a leopard. The beast had four wings of a bird on its back and four heads; and dominion was given to it.

After this I saw in the visions by night a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth and was devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that preceded it, and it had ten horns. I was considering the horns, when another horn appeared, a little one coming up among them; to make room for it, three of the earlier horns were plucked up by the roots. There were eyes like human eyes in this horn, and a mouth speaking arrogantly.

As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him. The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.

I watched then because of the noise of the arrogant words that the horn was speaking. And as I watched, the beast was put to death, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.

As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.

As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me. I approached one of the attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this. So he said that he would disclose to me the interpretation of the matter:

"As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever--forever and ever."

Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped what was left with its feet; and concerning the ten horns that were on its head, and concerning the other horn that came up, and to make room for which three of them fell out—the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly, and that seemed greater than the others.

Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;

  the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;

  for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,

   and its people as a delight.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem,

  and delight in my people;

no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,

  or the cry of distress.

No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days,

  or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;

for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,

  and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

They shall build houses and inhabit them;

  they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit;

  they shall not plant and another eat;

for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,

  and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

They shall not labor in vain,

  or bear children for calamity;

for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—

  and their descendants as well.

Before they call I will answer,

  while they are yet speaking I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,

  the lion shall eat straw like the ox;

   but the serpent--its food shall be dust!

They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,

  says the LORD.

“Tell the Truth About the Iron Teeth”

            I have rarely taught or preached about Daniel.  I grew up in an age and location that overused the book of Daniel.  At every turn, we heard traveling end-times preachers, quoting text after text from Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation, filling our minds with horrible images to scare the hell out of us.  Literally.

            Their specialty was to link the images to very specific current events.  One symbol was Russia.  Another symbol was the Chinese Red Army.  Another symbol was the European Common Market.  Some images were nuclear weapons.  They loved to try to count up the numerologies and prove that whatever year we were living in was being predicted in the Bible. They loved grossing us out and scaring us with the idea of blood flowing so deep it was up to the horses’ bellies.

            I eventually theologized my way out of that terroristic preaching.  It was kind of like the boy crying wolf.  How many preachers are going to tell me exactly how history must happen before I start doubting whether they have even a thimbleful of knowledge of God?  How is it that in the story of God’s calling of Israel, it seems like America is turning out to be God’s heroic champion?  Too much sensationalism led eventually, to borrow an image from Daniel, to the handwriting on the wall—they didn’t know what they were talking about.

            So I have avoided Daniel mostly.  I certainly know the stories and remember many of the images.  Yet, it has seemed to me to be a minor book among many giants, and I still hold that to be mostly true.  Even with that judgment, I was drawn to this text as it came up in the lectionary this month.  No small contributor to that interest came because my pastor, Rev. Dr. William C. Turner, Jr., took us into this text last Sunday.  I freely admit that some of what I will say today is shaped by his exposition of the text, as I give it my own slant and perspective.  But I also want to bring to your attention this Sunday’s text from Isaiah 65:17-25.  They are two parts of a single story about this season at the end of the Christian year. 

In these final Sundays, the texts point us to the Reign of Christ, our one true ruler and savior.  That theme is highly relevant in an age of many unworthy rulers and false saviors.  At the midpoint of reading these two texts is a young man shaking with fear.  He has seen in a vision the unfolding of horrific events, monsters destroying whole nations, and that last one seems especially arrogant and cruel, and it has teeth of iron.

I would love to work this text in my usual detail, but we have to get out of here in time for your next class.  So I am going to hold back and try to hit the highlights. 

Daniel is a seer, a dreamer of visions, and he is a devoted worshiper who does not neglect his time of prayer.  He is also a refugee, a forced immigrant, who has been enlisted into forced labor in a high level job under the emperor.  Local people resent him, and they look for ways to do him harm.  Since his youth, he has had a commitment to remember who his momma and daddy are.  He shows an unusual discipline to hold to living the way they raised him.  But we should not be surprised that this vision disturbed him.  He had already survived a horrific invasion and destruction of his homeland.  He was now living among enemies under constant surveillance. 

He didn’t dress, talk, or eat like the people around him. They probably thought his food smelled bad.  They resented his speaking another language.  They thought the way he wore his hair and clothes was an affront.  The least harmful interactions were the side eye and sneer.  Many were outwardly insulting.  People threatened him.  He knew his life was always on an edge.

When he woke up from this dream he was disturbed.  In fact, he was already shaking while he was a character in the dream.  Four great beasts symbolizing four great empires.  The winged lion of Babylon who rose up and walked on two feet like a human.  Then came the bear of Medea, whose usual teeth were not scary enough, but had to have three additional tusks in that mouth to devour many bodies of the nations.  A winged leopard of Persia had four heads, four sets of teeth to devour its prey, and it had dominion over everything.

Those were enough.  They represent the empires Daniel himself would experience.  Babylon would soon fall, and the Medes and Persians would follow one upon the other.  The young man Daniel would grow to be an old man as a captive servant of these conquering empires. 

I’m your professor, so I need to take an aside here to teach.  Some scholars find the book of Daniel to be closely linked to the era of the Maccabean revolt, and they associate the stories of Daniel and the three Hebrew children as exemplary of the discipline the holy rebels will need to overthrow their Greek overlords.  From this point of view, the stories of Daniel are being told by those who look back to his time as an inspiration and guide.  That would mean the writer already knows the history of the four empires, including the Greek empire which came after the book of Daniel comes to an end.  It’s a reasonable theory and one you should study and think about.  But overall, it does not change the impact of what we are examining in this text today.  Whether a vision of future events or a retelling of past events, the theological import is the same.

That fourth monster is almost beyond imagining.  A dragon, crashing its feet as it moves, destroying everything in its path.  It has teeth of iron and ten horns.  The horns start doing some funny stuff, and it really does seem like a dream when a horn on the dragon starts talking.  If I had the time, I would talk with you about Antiochus Epiphanes and the abomination of desolation.  I guess you will have to go look that up in a reputable scholarly work of biblical commentary and criticism.

The parade of monsters is finally interrupted by the appearance of great thrones, and a great, Ancient being enters wearing bright white clothes and having hair all big and wooly.  The throne, well I guess it’s a throne, is made out of fire, and it’s on wheels.  A kind of river of fire flows out, and all around are thousands and ten thousands serving this great one.  Apparently, they are gathering to cast judgment, and the books of the courtroom are being prepared.  The judgment is quick and severe.  The last, most terrifying and loudmouthed monster is destroyed.  The other three monsters lose all their power and dominion.

This is one of those long dreams.  It still isn’t over.  A giant cloud bank is coming, and on it is someone.  It’s someone that looks like a human being.  A plain old human being.  No monster.  No fire chair on wheels.  No giant teeth or horns.  A human figure is riding on the clouds to stand before the Ancient One.  All the power over all things, including all that was taken from the four beasts, gets handed to this human one.  And Daniel learns that this human one will retain dominion forever.

In the dream, all these events had Daniel shook up.  He was troubled in his spirit.  He was terrified by the visions.  So he went to one of the many attendants of the Ancient One to ask what in the heavens was going on.  Especially, Daniel was worried about that fourth beast with iron teeth and ten horns and the new talking horn with eyes.

In this vision of Daniel we get a glimpse into the imagination of another era.  How did they depict great evil and violence?  Huge, powerful, malformed, superpowered beasts, monsters leaving a swath of destruction and death, even eating people, as they move across the land.  For older ones here, it may remind us of the early monster movies about King Kong or Godzilla.  If Daniel were dreaming in our day, he might imagine a giant transformer machine fighter, or a hoard of zombie killers, or vampire armies.  In either era, we find human beings overwhelmed and terrified by the extent of evil and destruction that can occur in our world.  Emperors and armies are depicted as giant monstrous beasts in Daniel’s vision.

There is good reason to display evil in graphic terms.  People’s lives are destroyed by the monsters of lynching.  Mass killings are routine across our country.  Warfare over oil wells and other natural resources bring saturation bombing of towns, improvised explosive devices, and even bombs strapped to the bodies of young people.  Bombs in city streets destroy human bodies and send body parts in all directions.  Drones emerge from nowhere and blow up weddings and hospitals with their targeted missiles.  The violence of conquest and counter-conquest is brutal and monstrous.

Daniel lived on edge in a world of competing empires.  The fall of Jerusalem was one small moment in a centuries-long battle for regional domination.  Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon would soon come under domination of a new world order with succession of destroying armies from Medea, Persia, and Greece.  Off on the distant horizon loomed the most consuming power of all—Rome.  But they aren’t part of Daniel’s vision.

Such strong language to depict evil is not confined to Daniel.  The New Testament brings much of this language into regular use through Paul’s theological depiction of the forces of evil.  We have let bad theology take the iron teeth out of the very real, material evil that devours people’s lives.  Empires and their military might are devastating powers.  The worship of violence as saving power and its ritual enactment of dehumanizing and killing the enemy fuels the fervor of warfare.  Monstrous thirst and lust for blood feeds the sacrosanct idolatrous gods of nationhood.  Paul spoke in ways that should be clear to us—evil becomes structurally embodied in thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, and authorities.  These are words for the ways that human beings organize power in their societies.  But we empty them of this meaning and try to turn them into invisible spirits secretly teasing at our heartstrings.  Thrones are the seats of rulers—rulers who can become tyrants.  Principalities are the regions controlled by princes, who may be despotic and murderous.  Authorities of all sorts exercise domination in our world.

God has made humanity to live orderly lives, and structures of authority are part of God’s good creation.  But there is no assumption in biblical theology that every political structure and every existing ruler is put in place by the hand of God.  Despotic rulers are the enemies of God’s peace and God’s people.  Violent systems of death and domination are opposing God’s purposes for humanity and creation.  Just because someone got appointed king or got elected president does not mean that God put that person there.  God leaves freedom for humanity to seek our own way, and far too often we choose to ignore God’s ways and pursue worldly power and domination rather than shalom and beloved community.  The rise of great and monstrous evil is a turning away from God and a distortion of humanity’s creation and purpose.

Daniel’s vision tells us more than about the dragon with iron teeth.  A crucial element of the vision appears also in the unexpected and vague character who appears at the end.  With so much wild monstrosity coming wave after wave, there appears an image of ultimate power in the Ancient One.  Then, one “like a son of man,” really one who looked like anybody or nobody, a human person, showed up.  Somehow, no doubt equally puzzling to Daniel, all the power and authority of all of these deadly empires, all their territory and peoples, all the language groups and ethnicities, came to be under this nondescript, plain human being.  No one is excluded.  No group is tossed out because of the tint of their skin or the curl of their hair.  No language is deemed unofficial, no artificial boundary is honored, no group is classified as an alien or refugee.  One ruler embraces and welcomes all.  And the new dominion of this one would not be quickly replaced by the next monster.  According to the vision, it would be forever.  Nothing could destroy or defeat this human being’s rule granted by the Ancient One.

Daniel’s vision of a meek and lowly ruler, one with not remarkable features or fancy superpowers, reveals an insight into the work of God that is rooted in the long history of God’s presence in the world and calling of Israel.  God’s election is often surprising in using the less admired person, the smaller or weaker or younger one, even the outsider.  God turns the tables on human ambitions for power and honor.  From Jacob to Joseph to Rahab to Ruth to David, no one would have scripted God’s plan in the way God did it.  Choosing an enslaved people to be the sign of God in the world is not what we would have anticipated. 

Did Daniel have access to the scroll of Isaiah?  Scholars claim that the Book of Isaiah had become one of the most used sacred writings among the Jews in the era of the second temple.  If some of the later portions of Isaiah were still being composed in exile, then the ideas and themes of the book may have been familiar.  The themes of the servant songs of Isaiah show some kinship to this vision of Daniel.  Isaiah 53 says of the servant of God, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”  A human person who does not stand out in any particular way.

So in all his experience of tenuous existence and anxiety under imperial power, Daniel probably also had a sense of divine activity to bring an end to the evil machinations of human domination systems.  The Babylonian empire was already showing signs of its demise.  Other empires in the distance were threatening to rise in conquest.  The vision drives home the theological understanding that humanity’s self-made gods are short-lived.  Their days are numbered.  Their compromises with injustice, their inherent viciousness, their deals made with the devil will ultimately bring them down under their own weight of sin.  As the North African theologian Augustine describes in his great volume, The City of God, empires undergo constant revolutions and coups d’etat as one band of robbers comes and defeats another band of robbers to take control.  Evil crops up in human society like weeds, and any show of weakness by one regime will likely be met by an upstart challenger.

The vision offers hope that God will bring an end to this churning and grinding of humanity in the clash of empires.  God will judge the evil that nations and powerful people do.  Their destructive greed will come to an end.  And the one who will replace them all shares with all of us the weakness of a human being.  Through the marvelous and frail human creation, this treasure in earthen vessels, God will bring salvation.  What a wonder!  What a joke on the mighty!  What a flip-flop of human expectation!  What a reversal of all our plans!

Human beings and human societies love power.  We love to follow the toughest football team, the fightingest hockey team, the homerun hitting and strikeout pitching baseball team, the three-point shooting and dunking basketball team.  We admire powerful ships and airplanes, and stand in fearful awe before tanks and cannons.  But it is a misguided awe and admiration.  No giant bear or winged leopard will win in the end.  The iron-toothed dragon, able to chew up even the toughest things in its path, will be put down and replaced by one in appearance as a human being.  A soft-skinned, furless, armorless, easily fatigued, eminently killable creature is the one God elevates to rule in virtue and love.  What a strange and wondrous and mighty God we serve!

Daniel does not have much else to say about what is coming.  The shock of his crazy dream ends with the vision of the human being on the clouds.  If we stretch a bit to look at this week’s text from the prophet Isaiah, we get another imagistic piece of the story of Christ’s Reign.  For Daniel, it is a dramatic reversal, an unexpected elevation of the one who seems least likely to hold dominion and authority, after the world’s all-star team of organized evil does their worst.  Daniel doesn’t try to ask what will be next, or what it will be like.  Maybe he scared himself awake.  The end of the chapter says he could not get it out of his mind.

Isaiah 65:17-25 describes another prophetic vision of a new creation.  The world of violence and domination will pass away.  Where there was destruction and sorrow, there will be joy and flourishing.  Those horrible effects of war, oppression, and poverty will end.  Children won’t die of starvation.  The elderly will see their days extended and enhanced.  The vulnerable are precious to God, and God will act on their behalf.

Moreover, the new creation will bring justice.  People will build houses and grow food in their gardens.  But the emperor or terrorist won’t steal or destroy it.  They will live in the houses they build and eat the food they produce.  They won’t have to fear to bring children into the world.  God is making things right so that we may live with hope and joy.  It will be a time of peace.  The previously monstrous and scary beasts will become peaceful.  Wolves and lambs will play and rest together—this is not a wolf from the horrifying world of Daniel’s dream.  A lion that is hungry will eat vegetation rather than kill.  It is the opposite of the world that Daniel saw coming to an end.  No need for teeth of iron in a world of justice and peace.  None will hurt or destroy.

I’m drawn here to the medieval Latin liturgy and it's recognition of how prophecies like this one in Isaiah anticipate the incarnation:

O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum (Oh, great mystery and wonderful sacrament)

ut animalia viderent Dominum natum jacentem in praesepio! (that animals should see the newborn Lord placed in a manger!)

Isaiah proclaims to the returning exiles that they can hope for a restoration, a better life than even before, if they will unite themselves to God’s ways.  Jesus, deeply influenced in his theology by the book of Isaiah, embraces this vision of a new creation in which God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.  Moreover, Jesus adopts as his own path Isaiah’s depiction of the servant of God, the lowly one who cares for those who suffer and joins them in their struggle.  One has to wonder whether Jesus intentionally linked these two prophetic images when he chose the name son of man or human being to describe himself in his public ministry.  Mortal one, one like us, one with appearance as a human being—that is the one that the Ancient of Days elevates to the highest glory, honor, and power.

With Daniel, we find ourselves living in this in-between place.  Around us we see organized evil of monstrous proportions.  Hate, division, and killing are the coin of the realm.  We live in the world’s most powerful nation, an imperial power with client states and manufacturing colonies all over the world.  What sort of beast would Daniel have seen if the USA were in his dream?  An eagle with the body of a grizzly bear?  A panther with wings of a vulture?  It’s pointless to speculate, but the truth we must recognize is that we live in a nation destined to pass away.  This empire will fall, as all other have, under the weight of its own violence, its genocide, its weapons of mass destruction, and its constant warfare.  Demagogues rise up to stir the base passions of a nation built on white supremacy and slavery.  Hateful men laud their own debasing behavior toward women.  Before the throne of the Ancient One, every tyrant will be judged, found wanting, and brought down.  The momentary victories of unjust powers and dominions will ultimately find their end under the justice of God. 

In the meantime, we wait under the shadow of empire.  We seek the peace of the city where we live, that in its welfare we will also find peace.  We speak truth to power and say, “No,” to the unjust demands of empire.  We live as resident aliens, not of this world, but loving those in the world where, by God’s grace, we take another breath today.  And we rest in the hope of a new creation.  Our destiny is not destruction, but houses, gardens, joyous life together in a land of justice and peace.  Come, Lord Jesus.  May we see your peace and justice break forth anew, even in our lifetimes.  And may we walk in your way of love and care and standing with and for the ones the world has cast aside, as the songwriter Rick Elias says,

For now, we live on these streets,

Forbidding and tough,

Where push always comes to shove,

And it’s said, “Love’s never enough.”

Where a prophet in rags gave hope to a fearful world.

No injustice, no heart of darkness

Will keep this voice from being heard.

He was a man of no reputation,

And by the wise, considered a fool

When he spoke about faith and forgiveness

In a time when the strongest arms ruled.

But this man of no reputation

Loves the weak with relentless affection.

And he loves all us poor in spirit, just as we are.

He was a man of no reputation.

One like a human being, like a son of man, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him, homeless and with no place to lay his head, one you might pass on the street and never notice.  He is our salvation—whom then shall we fear?  If God is for us, who can stand against us?  This one truly reigns, and in Jesus Christ, and in no one else, we place our trust on this day and forevermore.  Amen.

 

Why Myrtle Trees?

On Monday night of the Shaw University Minister's Conference, the conference preacher, Rev. Dr. William H. Curtis of Mt. Ararat Baptist Church, Pittsburgh, PA, chose as his text the first vision of Zechariah, chapter 1, verses 7-17.  In particular, he focused on the first part of verse 8:

I saw at night, and behold, a man was riding on a red horse, and he was standing among the myrtle trees which were in the ravine (NASB).

Curtis took note that the description of the vision included only a few details before an extensive interpretation.  At the heart of the vision is a rider on a horse, and there are other riders on horses in the background.  Most of what follows pertains to the message, including questions and answers to the other riders and to God, delivered by the primary rider to Zechariah.

But Curtis said that his homiletician's imagination was drawn to the details given in verse 8.  The riders and horses were in a ravine.  It was a valley, a low place.  In it was a clump of myrtle trees.  Curtis could not stop wondering, "Why myrtle trees, and why in a valley?"

His message went on to say that myrtle trees grow especially well in valleys or ravines.  Unlike our ambitions to be on the mountain heights, this detail of the story represented for him a message about those common experiences of being in a low place, in a "valley."

Curtis demonstrated a kind of "spiritual" or "allegorical" interpretation of the text.  Such visionary passages often already have an allegorical meaning deeply embedded in the texts themselves.  As Curtis developed the allegory, he linked it to the interpretation of the vision that became Zechariah's prophetic oracle.

The people of God had endured great hardship.  Their enemies had treated them far more harshly than someone might say they deserved.  In the pilgrimage of the history of Israel, they were certainly living in a valley.  They had been in exile for decades.  A few had been able to return to their homeland, and they were scrambling to build a temple and reestablish their center of faith in Jerusalem.

They might look upon their situation as hopeless.  They might think that things have been just too hard, and no one should expect much of them.  But Curtis points out that even in valleys, there are trees that grow especially well.  These myrtle trees signify that the hard times the Israelites have faced can still be a time for growth.  They can still find the water and nourishment they need.  In fact, the valley may be the only setting in which some people can grow.

When they are on the mountaintop, God's work seems small from up so high.  They begin to imagine they are the the reason for their own success.  But in the valley, we can come to see how great God's work in our lives may be.  We become eager to find those things we need to rise from our struggles.

I give a very brief and weak synopsis of the message.  As you might imagine, in this valley of my life, wondering how to move on after Everly's death, it was a message that spoke to me.  For even in the valley of the shadow of death (and that is the shadow in which I walk), God is with me.  It was an encouraging word.  Even in my deep valley, there is growth that can and must happen.  I shed tears, but they were tears of hope.  So I am relieved to be standing among the myrtle trees.

I Have Heard of Your Faithfulness and Your Love, part 2
(This sermon was delivered at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on August 20, 2006)

(continued from a previous post on Thursday, August, 24)

The Holy Spirit and faithful churches. I had heard of John and Vera Mae Perkins and Voice of Calvary Ministries. I had heard of Habitat for Humanity and the Christian Community Health Association. I had heard of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California, St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles, California, Lawndale Community Church in Chicago, Illinois, and Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas. I had heard of the simple way community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Open Door Community in Atlanta, Georgia. In each case what I had heard of was their faithfulness to the Lord Jesus and their love for all the saints. And I wanted to learn from them and try to use my training to understand how the Holy Spirit was irrupting in all these places to remind the church in the United States of who it is we are following and what it is God is calling us to do and be.

Paul talks about this kind of irruption of the Holy Spirit in verse 17, saying that he prays that God will give the Ephesian churches “a spirit of wisdom and revelation” as they come to know this powerful Triune God. What had God been up to in the metropolitan area of Ephesus at the time that Paul wrote the letter? God’s own Spirit had been revealing to these churches the very heart and mind of God, the wisdom that transforms Christians and churches to become more Godlike, more Christlike, more Spirit-filled and Spirit-led. How can we know God unless God’s Spirit reveals God to us?

Thanks be to God, that we are not left alone to make our own way and try to find out what life is all about. I don’t mean we aren’t required to work at it and study to show ourselves approved, learning through our work and prayer. But all that effort would be fruitless in the face of a holy and almighty God if God did not first come to us. So Paul is praying that their faithfulness will result in an ever-deepening tutorial by the Holy Spirit.

Seeing with enlightened eyes of the heart, not just the eyes of scientific observation. What would result from that ongoing growth in wisdom, that ongoing revelation of God’s care for the world? Verse 18 says that it will be an enlightening of the eyes of their hearts. They will see not just with the scientific observer’s eyes trying to gather information, but also with enlightened eyes of the heart. Still, they will need to see with those scientific eyes, too, so they will not be deceived by the lies of the principalities and powers.

Most every time the powers make an attack on the rest of us, they make a public relations announcement to explain why what they are doing is really good for us. The world’s largest corporation announced this week that they would put a cap on salaries, in fulfillment of an internal memo earlier this year that predicted that their workers were going to start costing them more money for salaries and benefits now that many workers are staying with their jobs for longer periods, earning raises and increased benefits. But the company announced it by saying that they were doing this to help their workers advance to higher-level jobs. They said salary caps would be an incentive to apply for higher levels of supervisory or management positions.

Now you and I may be gullible sometimes, but we are not stupid. So the longer we spend thinking about this rationale, the more it does not make sense. No wonder the workers are not happy about it. The company has lots and lots of workers at the lower levels. Then there are far fewer jobs at the higher levels. It’s like a pyramid. So the workers see that they will either have to settle for fixed wages eventually or be the one out of five or one out of ten or one out of 100 that gets promoted to a higher level job. The other four, or nine, or ninety-nine, will be stuck. If they want higher wages, they’ll have to find a job somewhere else. And that makes the company happy, because they would much rather hire new low-wage employees to replace the ones who are making better wages and earning better benefits.

So we need to see with the eyes of the scientific observer, to uncover the lies of the powers and see what is being done to the people God loves. That last part of it is also why the scientific observer’s eyes are not enough. We also have to see with the eyes of our hearts enlightened by the heart of God who loves all creation.

You and I have driven through or walked by neighborhoods where houses are run down and mostly boarded up. Most of the time people see those neighborhoods as blights, as wastelands, as places where unknown and dangerous things might be going on. If any of you have been in North Philadelphia, in Kensington Heights, for instance, you would have seen an extreme version of that kind of neighborhood. North and South Lawndale in Chicago also has been that kind of neighborhood. Wayne Gordon, the pastor of Lawndale Community Church in Chicago, says that at two times in the history of those neighborhoods, their population reached half a million. But by the 1970s, Lawndale had declined from 500,000 to 100,000 residents. That means there were a lot of boarded up businesses and houses and apartment buildings and churches.

If you haven’t seen that sort of place, maybe you can imagine it. I saw it this year in Lawndale, in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, in Camden, New Jersey, and in Brooklyn, New York. In North Philadelphia there are boarded up, dilapidated, crumbling houses for block after block, mile after mile. Some places have vast stretches of bulldozed lots with a scattering of run-down houses still inhabited by the poor. Other blocks seem completely deserted.
Sister Margaret McKenna saw North Philadelphia with a different set of eyes. She saw run down houses which were the last resort of desperate people. She saw boarded up houses where crack addicts hid and practiced their deadly rituals of self-destruction. So she convinced her Medical Missionary Sisters to buy a small house on a corner for under $10,000 in the late 1980s, and she began to make friends with the addicts. She met a Black Baptist pastor who was working with recovering addicts and joined forces with him to create a plan to help recovering addicts pool their resources to live in community.

The people in this recovery community participate in Bible study, in community service, in life skills training, in sharing their economic resources and housing, in job training, in support groups, in training about alternatives to violence, and they live together as a close-knit neighborhood ought to live. The public lie about North Philadelphia is that it is a lost cause, needs to be bulldozed, is full of criminals, and ought to be redeveloped by speculators who think they can buy it cheap and sell it for a huge profit to professionals. But seeing the truth behind the lies let Sister Margaret and her partners see that the abandoned places and the abandoned people are God’s places and God’s people. She saw Jesus in the homeless addicts, and helped them have a place to stay. The community is called New Jerusalem Laura, a collection of houses and neighbors devoted to seeking and following God. We have to see with enlightened eyes of the heart, and then we have to be faithful.

Not being blinded by eyes of fear. We also can’t just see with the eyes of fear. Fear will blind us to the truth. Fear is the absence of hope, the absence of faith, and the barrier to faithfulness. We live in a time when politicians and business leaders and managers or supervisors are constantly playing on our fears. We have orange alerts and heightened security measures. We can’t trust people with a water bottle or a tube of toothpaste. We hear that pink slips are coming. Advertisements aimed to shake us up tell we need a security system on our cars and our houses. We have to change our passwords on our ATM cards so that people in a far away country will not empty our bank accounts. We have to delete unexpected emails to make sure someone we can’t see or don’t know is not taking over our home or work computers. Fear shuts us up. It makes us stand back. It closes us in.

But Paul says to let the Spirit open the eyes of your heart, transforming them through the wisdom of knowing God. A young preacher who grew up in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans ended up in Brooklyn, New York, and in a pastorate that other ministers told him would be a career-ending job. He pressed on because he felt the call of God, and didn’t let the fear of a ruined career drive his decisions. As he got to know his parishioners, he found that many had left or were not attending because they were afraid to be out in their own neighborhood to go to church. They were afraid to wait for the bus. They were afraid to walk into city parks. They were afraid to drive down city streets. There was no police protection. The neighborhood was under the control of drug dealers and organized crime. They were seeing their world through the eyes of fear, and they had good reason to do so.

Rather than just hand it over to the powers of neglect and harm, Johnny Ray Youngblood and his congregation began to plan for recovering their neighborhood. They confronted drug dealers and criminals. They bought property and got the drug houses and prostitution houses out of their neighborhood. They joined with other churches in an organization like Durham CAN and confronted city hall about police protection, city services, and affordable housing. And before long, the fog of fear was lifting in the sphere of influence of St. Paul Community Baptist Church. They saw through the eyes of the heart, led by the Spirit, and they responded with faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to see through the eyes of the heart and not the eyes of fear. We need to see through eyes enlightened by the Spirit of God, and we need to respond with faithfulness.

I could tell similar stories about Dr. J. Alfred Smith, Sr., and the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, or about the Circle Rock Church in Chicago, or about the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston. I heard of their faithfulness. They have been made wise by the Spirit who revealed to them the heart of God.

Getting beyond eyes of selfishness. There is another way of seeing that will keep us from doing what God wants us to do. We live in a culture dedicated to looking through the eyes of selfishness. With these eyes, we see people’s problems and say to ourselves, “That’s not my problem.” The world of marketing tempts these eyes by saying, “When was the last time you did something for just you?” Or they say, “You deserve a break today,” even though they said the same thing on that commercial yesterday.

We get so wrapped up in what someone said that hurt our feelings that we sit and mope and don’t even think about what we could be doing for someone with real problems. It reminds me of a poster I saw many years ago that said, “A refugee would love to have your problems.” Don’t you think people in Southern Lebanon might like to have your problems? Wouldn’t people in Darfur love to have your problems? Wouldn’t people sleeping on Durham’s streets tonight love to have my problems?

In San Francisco, California, I visited Grace Fellowship Community Church and the ministry partner they founded, Grace Urban Ministries. They are a Presbyterian congregation in the urban core of San Francisco. Founded in 1983 out of a mother church in Chinatown, they first began to minister in a suburban part of San Francisco. Their church included many Chinese Americans as well as some European Americans, ministering in one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse cities in the United States. Of course, Chinese Americans could be justified in pulling back from European Americans because of the history of mistreatment of Chinese workers in the U. S. But rather than self-centered eyes, they were looking through enlightened eyes of the heart and willing to seek reconciliation.

This church could have done like so many other churches in this country do. It could have settled into suburban life and waited to relocate if the community changed. But a decade after their founding, instead of moving away from the poor, Grace Fellowship Community Church relocated into the midst of the city where the needs of the poor were at their door.
Even after moving to a poorer neighborhood, they could have hired a few people to do the work and just showed up for preaching. We don’t know anyone who just shows up for preaching, now, do we? But instead they made a strong covenant of accountability to be involved in weekly Bible study, worship, and ministry. When Grace Fellowship has a churchwide retreat to pray and plan and cast a vision, over 90% of their members attend. They have as many at weekday Bible study as they have on Sunday for worship. Seeing with enlightened eyes of the heart, not with self-centered eyes, lets them demonstrate faithfulness as a real people of God with love for all the saints. We need to see with those kinds of eyes, and be faithful.

Hope and power when churches are faithful. Paul says in the next verse that enlightened eyes will see hope. It’s so easy for us to come to church and shout and get a charge, or even to quietly meditate in worship and gain strength, but then we leave to face the world with resignation that nothing is ever going to be different. We can cry out that we believe in God, but then say there is no point in trying to change the system.

Well I’m here today to say that our faith in God must be matched by our faithfulness in God. I have seen in this past year the amazing results of faithfulness. Prisoners are leaving their past of trouble and failure to become community leaders. Addicts are making themselves accountable to others and leaving behind their addictions. Doctors are turning down the big salaries they could have to serve at moderate wages in church-based community clinics. Blacks and whites and Latinos and Asians are putting aside their differences to worship together, to minister together, to recognize one another’s beauty and blessedness in the eyes of God. Faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ changes things. Seeing those changes is the seedbed of our hope.

Paul goes on in verse 19 to point out that we who are faithful can find out about the “immeasurable greatness” of God’s power. That power raised Jesus from the dead and seated him on the throne as Lord of heaven and earth. That power helped a few farming preachers and laypeople in Americus, Georgia, come up with a plan to use Christian moral practices to bring an end to poverty housing. That power led a church in Dallas to respond so quickly and effectively to Hurricane Katrina that the city of Dallas came to that Baptist church for guidance on how to set up their Katrina relief program. That power helped a rag-tag group of everyday folks in North Philadelphia to confront city government and the powers of the official church, even to the point of going to jail. They won a victory to keep housing for thirty homeless families. And that power of God led the judge to release them from jail because a young man explained to him that they were standing up for the homeless because Jesus was himself a homeless man.

And Paul says that the power of God has given Jesus authority above every rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name in this age and the age to come. Yes, in the age to come, and yes, in this age. God’s power is greater than the U. S. President and Congress, greater than city hall or the county commission. God’s power is greater than big oil companies and multinational textile firms. God’s power is greater than Google and Microsoft and AOL. God’s power is greater than MTV and BET and Disney and Time-Warner. God’s power is greater than crack or methamphetamines or white lightning. God’s power is greater than the pornography industry, the banking industry, or the fashion industry.

All of those pretenders for power are under Christ’s feet. Ephesians says all this is put under Christ’s feet, making him the head over all things. He is the top of the heap, the one where the buck stops, the Supreme Leader.

Yet we have to be careful about carrying on about Jesus’ being the boss, because we read in the Gospels how he leads. He’s not like earthly, worldly leaders. He leads with love. He leads with service. He leads with faithfulness. That is the kind of supervisor I want. That is the one I want making decisions that will affect my life.

And Paul says there is a reason Christ has been made the head of all things. It was not just to have a title. It was not to throw his weight around and show everyone he is in charge. Verse 22 says he was put over all things “for the church.” God’s power over all other powers is for the church. We can’t be just sitting around saying, “God, go fix it up for me.” God has given us this power. Are our eyes enlightened? Can we see what God wants us to do? Do we have wisdom taught by the Holy Spirit? If so, then faithfulness is what we must show. Faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ and love toward all the saints—that is what Paul had heard about. And now he is saying keep on that path, knowing that God’s almighty power has been given through Christ for the church.

If that is not clear enough, the final verse brings it home. The church is the body of Christ. We are Christ in the world. Our faithfulness must show Christ to the world. Our love must be Christ’s love for the world. Our view of the people must be Christ’s view of the people. Our care for the addict, the homeless, the heartbroken, the oppressed, the poor, must be Christ’s care for them, as he told us when he said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me and has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the Jubilee year of the Lord. We are Christ’s body. Not just a thinking mind, but a working body. We can’t settle for hearing some preaching and then taking that for all we are supposed to do. We have to be the body of Christ moving in the world, shaking things up, caring for people, making changes. It can be done because all power is in him. Paul says the church, the body of Christ, has the fullness of him who fills all in all. We are the bearers, the carriers, the hands and feet and mouths and strong backs of what Jesus is doing. Do we know it? Do we believe it? Are we going to be faithful to it?

Amen.