NEW ORLEANS (BP)–“New Orleans and New York City have so much in common,” Gary Frost said last Saturday, Sept. 9. As the main speaker in our area’s “Ridgecrest on the River” training event, the executive director of the Metropolitan Baptist Association of New York was a welcome guest, particularly on the Saturday before the fifth anniversary of 9-11.
“Both cities are under threat,” he said. “Yours from hurricanes and flooding and ours from terrorism.” He continued, “But we do not look to Homeland Security for our protection. We look to Heavenland Security. Not the Central Intelligence Agency but the Celestial Intelligence Agency.”
Gary’s theme was the incident at the end of Joshua 5 where Israel’s leader, Joshua, was confronted by a man identifying himself as captain of the Lord’s armies. Joshua asks a logical question, “Whose side are you on? Are you for us or for them?” The man responded, “No.”
Frost said, “I have two titles for this message. One is a distinguished sermon title: ‘Pursuing a Kingdom Perspective.’ The other is a down home title: ‘It Ain’t About You.'”
The man of God let Joshua know, “I did not come to take sides. I came to take over.”
Frost said, “It’s not about us, about our sides. We need to pray for wisdom to see our battles from the divine perspective.”
“We get disoriented and lose our perspective. Like the disciples James and John who asked for places of prominence in the Kingdom,” Frost said. “They were glory hounds.”
“Joshua thought winning this battle was his responsibility. But the man of God told him to pull off his shoes, that he was standing on holy ground,” he said. “That was the same thing God had said to Moses at the Burning Bush. That’s a reminder that this captain whom Joshua was facing was the Lord Himself. This was a pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“I’d like to ask every leader, ‘Have you been to the burning bush? Have you pulled off your shoes and worshipped and given the battle back to the Lord?’ Some haven’t, and as a result you are too arrogant and think everything is about you. But it’s not. It’s about Him. It’s about His kingdom.”
“Take off your shoes,” Frost added. “It’s time to worship.”
Friday, I had picked up Dr. Frost at the airport and given him the grand tour of the city, starting at the sad St. Bernard housing project and ending in the Lower Ninth Ward. This was his second trip to New Orleans since the hurricane. Earlier this year he was part of a team from New York working out of Suburban Baptist Church in East New Orleans. Freddie Arnold and I were in the services at Suburban that morning to welcome Dr. Frost and his colleagues.
We’re indebted to a lot of dear friends and church volunteers from all over New York State who have been here to help us rebuild. They have sent contributions and in some cases have invited pastors and wives up for vacations.
That’s one reason many of us were embarrassed by our mayor’s unthinking gaffe about the Ground Zero site being “a hole in the ground.” Frankly, we’re grateful for the New Yorkers we’ve talked to not being too offended.
A friend asked me Friday what I’m reading. I was almost embarrassed to say, “A biography of Bing Crosby and a book by Dick Cavett written over 20 years ago.” The only excuse I can find for not reading heavier, more profitable stuff, is for the escape. Just to get my mind off what we deal with every day.
“Eye on Cavett,” written in 1983, is probably something the library should have tossed onto a sale table a decade ago. But I was struck by a lengthy chapter Cavett — a resident of Manhattan, mind you — wrote about New Orleans. I have no idea how he feels now or what he has done post-Katrina, but back then he loved New Orleans. Some of his reasons we can identify with and appreciate, but some of the others are — well, aspects that embarrass us about our city.
Cavett loves the history, the homes and the restaurants of New Orleans. He enjoys the feel of the French Quarter with its quaint courtyards and fascinating shops and bizarre characters. Here are a couple of quotes from Cavett:
— “As with any famous city, everything that can be said about New Orleans has been said. That it is rich in history, tradition and beauty. That at the right time of year (and this is all-important) it is relaxed, dreamlike, illicit, carefree. Also that it is cheesy, tasteless, being exploited and eroded, and like all American cities, sometimes dangerous.”
— “People who say they didn’t like New Orleans probably saw this latter side of it. They approached it wrong. They probably stayed at a high-rise modern hotel, for example, instead of the Maison de Ville. And they probably hung out on Bourbon Street.”
— “Enough of old New Orleans remains to make you realize that there was once a wonderfully different way of life in America, at least in the Old South — a way of life slower yet more intense than our bland cosmopolitanism, more physical yet more esthetic, earthier yet more sophisticated.”
Had he ended there, everything would have been fine. But then he goes on to tell of the fun times he had chatting up the streetwalkers and queens (men in drag) and exploring the seamier side of the Quarter. He spent a long evening enjoying a show put on for him by all the Quarter’s drag queens. And then he went to church.
“Going to church has always bored me to idiocy,” he writes. “I agreed with Mark Twain that the other six days of the week were for recovering from the suffering of Sunday.”
“As a kid I was told that going to church was good for you and I suppose maybe it was, in the same sense that not asking for a drink of water when you’re thirsty, as German children were taught, allegedly builds character.”
He describes the boring church experiences he knew growing up in Nebraska. Then he surprises us with this:
“It was in New Orleans that I realized for the first time, in my thirties, what a memorable experience church could be.”
On Esplanade Avenue, just behind the French Quarter, he took an early Sunday morning walk and was enjoying having the streets all to himself. Then he heard warm, exciting music flowing onto the streets out of the open windows of a church. As he approached, a woman invited him in. It was an African-American church with everything that this implies — the grandmotherly ladies dressed in their all-whites, the sister who was slain in the spirit while worshipping, the incredible choir, the gifted preacher.
At the offering, Cavett emptied his pocket of the wadded-up bills. And he ended up going home with one of the families who had recognized him. They told him, “Mama is a big fan of yours and she’ll die if she doesn’t get to meet you.”
And that’s all he said. End of chapter, and in the next chapter, he’s off to meet with Tennessee Williams for another kind of experience.
I assume Dick Cavett still lives in New York City. If so, I wonder if anyone has invited him to the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Perhaps someone will read this and do it. If so, coming from our city as this is, it will be his New Orleans experience come full circle.
Today is the fifth anniversary of 9-11. I will not be watching any of the TV shows inviting us to relive that tragic day. I have not seen and will not be watching any of the movies that dramatize it. In the same way, I did not watch Spike Lee’s four hour movie about New Orleans and its catastrophe. Not now, not ever.
My brother Charlie’s granddaughter recorded the music played at his funeral this past April, then burned it onto compact discs. My parents listen to it from time to time and cry. Mom is sending my copy by someone headed this way. “Everyone else has theirs,” she said.
I don’t have the heart to tell her it will go in a drawer. I won’t be listening to it. I love my little brother and miss him. But I just don’t need any more pain.
New Yorkers understand.
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Joe McKeever is director of missions of the Greater New Orleans Baptist Association.
