I've had a lot I've been stirring around in my preacher's stew this past week and surprised myself by writing a poem for you as my preaching for today. In the stew is this bittersweet feast of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, the anticipation of next Sunday's outrageously joyful feast of Pentecostal diversity and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus' commission to make disciples of all nations -- how are we as a nation doing as a disciple of Jesus?

Another ingredient in my preacher's stew this past week has been a preacher I just happened on on YouTube this week. You've probably never heard of him. His name is Jeremiah Wright. For some reason, there has been a lot of national attention paid to him recently, and he has taken the opportunity to tell people about black Christians in the United States, their history and their hopes.

I watched all three of the main videos of Reverend Wright and learned a lot. Sure, he has a style that's a bit more aggressive and seemingly unconciliatory than I'm usually comfortable with. Perhaps that's even traces of racism in my soul. More importantly, I thought he generalized to a fault sometimes. For example, there's his tendency to contrast blacks and whites with fairly broad stokes. But then maybe a white person like me might be inclined to feel this way. I don't want to be left out of the black experience. After all, my black Dominican brother and I don't call our concert the "Black OR White Concert" but the "Black AND White Concert: A Friendship in Song."

Reverend Wright also regularly distinguishes between Americans and the American government, which also feels a little inaccurate and unproductively "us and them" to me. I am the government. We are the government. But then what do I know about the exclusion of African Americans from their own government? Blacks haven't even been allowed to vote for long and many still have trouble doing so.

But the bottom line is that I learned a lot from Reverend Wright this past week, and I encourage you to go to YouTube and check these videos out. Most of us don't get to regularly hear a black preacher, and this is a moment of opportunity. The three main videos are Reverend Wright's talk at the National Press Club, including the Q&A, his talk to the NAACP, and his interview with Bill Moyers, that white Southern journalist with such depth and integrity. I believe it's in all three of these videos that he talks about the black and white experience of music, including, in one of the speeches, handclapping, which made me think of the awesome invitation in today's psalm: "All you peoples clap your hands." By the way, I also discovered a brief video of a Catholic priest and friend of the Reverend Wright's in Chicago, a Father Flager, a white man, who defends his friend in no uncertain terms in an interview with a young, uninformed journalist.

One other ingredient in my preacher's stew I want to mention before sharing my poem with you is a play I went to last weekend called "Lady." Lady is the name of the dog that goes hunting with three childhood friends. One is now a conservative senator, whose campaign manager was his regretful liberal friend whose son has decided to sign up for the Marines after talking with the senator. Watching these two characters, I got it better than I've ever gotten it before, the mindset of some who wanted to go to war in Iraq. "We had to do something," the senator tells his friend. "Even if it wasn't going to be the best choice, we had to do something." And his friend responds: "We should have waited. Simply waited." Of course, doing something immediately and compulsively and waiting indefinitely aren't our only options in life. But there seemed to be something profoundly true in this call to wait, especially as we wait for the coming of the Spirit.

So, with that long introduction over, here's the short poem I wrote for you:

Once there was a choir. Now that choir had a lot of different sorts or voices: sweet voices, sour voices, voices that were blue. That choir had strong voices, gentle voices, both of which were true. Some voices were angry, some were peaceful, some were filled with hope. Some voices were afraid, some were bold, some sang the whole range or scope.

And in that choir, there were many hands. That choir had hands that were downbeat clappers, hands that were upbeat clappers, and hands that clapped with their own sense of time. Some hands were syncopated, some hands raised and elated, some still clapping way past their so-called prime.

That choir also had many ears. Ears that liked to hear dissonance, ears that liked the familiarity of home, and ears that liked it loud. Some ears were open, others not so much, maybe a little proud.

Now that choir, with its many voices and many hands and many ears, was quite a crazy throng. Yet the more voices, hands, and ears that joined in, the richer and livelier their song. All belonged. None were wrong -- not completely. All were true, if not always neatly. And together they could sing anything that came along.

How could this be, you might wonder? How could they keep from endless blunder? They had a secret which everyone knew. A secret easy to forget but true. That secret, that secret was in the soul. But that secret, their secret, was out of control.

Because that secret, though strange and odd, that secret was from God. That secret was...strong and blustery. But that secret was never wrong, always trustworthy.

Did I tell you God was in that choir? That God has hands and a voice? Did I tell you God even has ears? That God sang in that choir and rejoiced?

But that's not the secret. Do you know it? Can you hear it? Is it dancing between your clapping hands? It's the Spirit.

That Spirit is God's. That Spirit is ours. It blows where it wills. It comes down like lovely spring showers.

But right now that Spirit is quiet. That Spirit waits. So we wait, too. While that Spirit re-creates.