Today I was speaking with Bob Howard about his trip this summer with others in our conference to Mozambique. He said that wherever you go there, if folks know you are a preacher, you are asked to preach. He preached several times in the bush, but he also preached in a church of 500 in Maputo. He told me about the choir sang that day and he remembered them singing "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel" and how well it was sung. So, I said, let me get this right: You heard a choir in Maputo United Methodist Church on the coast of Mozambique sing a slave spiritual, right? Yes, he said. I knew I needed to think a bit more about this and in fact did some research on the song and its meaning.

I gleaned from several internet sources that it is believed that this particular spiritual was often used as a code for slaves who were fleeing to freedom to illustrate the Underground Railroad. A wheel within a wheel was a good way to talk about the circuit of the Railroad and perhaps even to illustrate to one another what was known about that circuit.

I also learned that there are folks who believe that what Ezekiel saw was not really a vision from God but something else altogether as this t-shirt says:

And then there are those who think Ezekiel was on some hallucinogenic drug and that's why he saw this fantastic vision.

It's really easier to go with one of these more bizarre explanation for Ezekiel's vision than to take it as the vision that it was. I am not going to give my interpretation here, but I have been thinking that between the slaves who originated this song, and those in Maputo who sang it the Sunday that Bob was there may have had some real resonance between them. The American slaves sang the song as a song of hope, of freedom, for a different life that could exist. Despite their slavery, they knew they were made for freedom. The Maputo choir, many members who could remember the terrible war that killed so many, most all having been effected by drought and other natural disasters, could sing this hope of freedom, and of moving forward, because they know they were made for freedom too.

I am not sure I can ever experience that same sense that the American slaves and the choir in Mozambique had/have, but on occasion, I wish I could have a vision, so fantastic, so wild, that people would still be talking about it 2500 years later. More importantly, I yearn for a vision that has so much the stamp of God on it, so full of a transcendent spirit that I cannot grasp its meaning. I want to live like another wild one, John the Baptist who wore strange clothes and ate strange food and faithfully preached a message of what was to come, allowing God to use him as the forerunner of Someone who yes, calls us to repent, but fulfills John's message not with sheer judgement but with unending grace.

However, the vision that I am called to live out right now is the work of resourcing churches who want to blossom, but who need help both believing the fact that they can and need the tools that will give them courage to blossom in the right direction; I am called to listen to pastors, most of them who really believe that they are not doing a very good job at the ministry, and who need someone to point out their gifts, yes, but who will help them name what is holding them back, and to bless their attempts, and to always let them know that, yes, there are areas where intentional work needs to happen and that they are already blessed and beloved by God and by me. I don't get those wild dreams like Ezekiel about wheels and moving parts and fantastic creatures; I don't get to go into the desert and wear camel hair and eat locusts, but I do get to pray, and grow in my own faith, and to speak the truth to pastors and congregations. That in itself often gives be wild days and wild nights. It also lets me experience hope for our church and to sense the freedom God gives us to be courageous in the midst of a nay-saying world. I guess I do know a thing or two about being bound in guilt and shame, too, and thank God I not only hope for redemption but it that it has come to be.