First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Acts 11 and Revelations 21

“Finding Livingstone”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

May 6, 2007

My daughter Laura and I took the tube to the Westminster Station. My thought was that Westminster Abbey was probably the best place to see England in a glance. There was plenty of Royals as many a Henry as well as Elizabeth and Mary are buried there. It is nearly 1,000 years old so it carries the gravitas of antiquity. And there is also its beauty. Soaring ribbed ceilings, stained glass and the statues of the kings and queens, the coronation chair, the high altar: Westminster Abbey has little that is disappointing.

I had an ulterior motive, though, I must confess. I wanted to find Livingstone. David Livingstone, the best known missionary, the one who penetrated central Africa and crusaded for the end of the slave trade is buried at Westminster. His heart was buried in Africa under a mpundu tree, but his body was returned to his homeland.

The first chapels you encounter at Westminster are very old and the eras of the lives buried therein make Livingstone look like a novelty of contemporary fascination. Even though next year will mark the 135^th year since his death, in Westminster that makes you a Johnny come lately. Hence I really didn’t start looking until we made the turn past the coronation chair. And there were some recent burials in these chapels. But they were family crypts whose first deposits were made during the crusades.

At the poets corner I began to wonder if I had missed him. Here were W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas, writers I enjoy, but also people who died in the twentieth century. Breaking down I asked a tour guide where to find Livingstone. “He’s buried in the nave,” was his response and I realized I was still in the chapel areas. To reach the nave we needed to go out into the courtyard, past the snack bar and actually re-enter the Abbey.

In the nave the feeling was different, a different sensibility. Where the chapels and chancels were more museum than church, the nave exuded a sense of worship. This was the heart of the actual congregation. I searched a bit more. There was a large stone placed for Winston Churchill asking the nation never to forget him, there were rows of candles in red votives so prayer could be offered long past your lingering. Still I couldn’t see a plaque, let alone a statue. And then I looked down.

There beneath my feet, covered with a large black stone laid Livingstone. The slab has these words carved in them: brought by faithful hands over land and sea here rests David Livingstone, missionary, traveler, philanthropist, born March 19, 1813, at Blantyre, Lanarkshire, Died May 1, 1873 at Chitambo’s Village, Ilala. For 30 years his life was spent in unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, to abolish the slave trade, of central Africa, where with his last words he wrote, “all I can do in my solitude, is, may heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one, American, English, or Turk who will help to heal this open sore of the world.”

***

During our time in Malawi Bob, Kathryn Ann, Laura and I spent a fair deal of time at the American Embassy. We got to know the staff so well they didn’t check us, but offered us hospitality and care. We were there to apply for the travel visas for the youth choir from Mzuzu.

It was our strategy to not only be present during the application of visas, but to make a direct appeal to the ambassador. So on the morning of their application and interview, the four of us met with the U.S. Ambassador. We were grilled for nearly an hour. Or I should say, I was grilled as Bob told me later he never made eye contact with anyone else. Having been through many such examinations in seminary I didn’t blink, but enjoyed the exchange.

The theme of the examination was worth. Beneath each query and conversation masking a test was the issue of worth. Are you a well intended, but misguided pastor, or are you a friend of Malawi who understands the great responsibility you are taking on with this choir? In a way his questions were a kind of charge before the blessing of Livingstone. Before “heaven’s rich blessing come down” you need to know what this means, how profound the suffering is into which you wade.

Although we would come to find out that Ambassadors are bound by law to not to influence the visa process, I hope the success of the visas was a moment of hope for him. For Malawi even now 135 years after Livingstone’s death is still an open sore. The hunger, the malaria, the brackish water, the famine, and now AIDS makes one wonder if Livingstone fully perceived the depth of suffering which is Africa if he believed there could be an end, if there could be healing. I hope the choir coming brought a moment of hope to Ambassador Eastman as it has brought it to the church at Mchengatuba of Mzuzu.

During the Civil Right Movement there was a critique of the black church and its theology. The critique went something like this, “you speak of the great bye and bye, of when we gather at the river, or getting a pair of shoes when you get to heaven. You have made people believe that justice is something for the next life. But we want justice now. We will settle for a seat at the lunch counter rather than waiting for the feast with the saints.”

Our passage today from Revelations speaks of a New Heaven and a New Earth is very close to the earlier theology of the black church, the hope of the spirituals. Someday, in the great bye and bye, we will see God and the home he makes with his people. God will be with us; there will be no weeping; death will be no more; the first pangs will pass away.” There John of Patmos heard from the throne, I am the Alpha and the Omega, I am the beginning and the end.

I’ve heard this hope in Africa, this dream. You don’t hear it directly as a kind of quotation, you hear it in the cries which well up in song and prayer; you hear it in the dizzy sermons of young pastors who are overwhelmed by the weight and enormity of the suffering people face, the same people he is charged to bring hope and faith and a love of God. I heard it last year like a thunder clap in the mother who dismissed the notion that malaria could be no more in her lifetime, “impossible,” she said making a face at me suggesting I needed to have my head examined.

When we met with the Ambassador in the capital he asked me a question of the churches. And much to my surprise I actually had an answer that seemed to bring clarity. Later in our visit I tested my answer with Rev. Nkhoma when we were at his house for dinner. The question was about a long ongoing dispute between two synods or governing bodies in the Presbyterian Church of Central Africa. What followed was an affirmation wrapped in one of the greatest oral histories I have ever been privileged to hear.

He started with Livingstone. He came here to Malawi. And after he died the Scottish sent missionaries in his memory. The mission to the south was named Blantyre after the city of his birth and the north was named Livingstonia in his name. These are their names even today. Rev. Nkhoma went on to describe the legacy of the missionaries who came for more than a century. Again and again, his words seemed to come to rest on Livingstone’s grave. It was as if the epitaph (the blessing) was an invitation- come to heal. And as someone who has gone I must attest it is a powerful call.

The call is not just to see Malawi; it’s not just an invitation to go to Africa. It’s a call to open the church and more importantly to open your heart. On Livingstone’s grave on the sides are a series of quotations- one is from John. “Other sheep I have, which are not of this Fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice.” In our reading from Acts this is what Peter is trying to convey. Other sheep have heard the voice.

It may be frequency, going each year to Malawi, but the people have gotten used to me a bit. It may just be the Malawian sense of hospitality that makes me feel a sense of acceptance, but I hope it is what Peter calls the baptism of Holy Spirit that draws us together. For I do not see the Malawians as Africans so much as I see them as our brothers and sisters in Christ. Worship in Tambuka or Tonga, singing Chewa or hearing the beating of the canoes that calls the fisherman each night to the shore, I know I am in a place that is other. Yet, even though it is other, I am with family just as I am here.

After listening to Rev. Nkhoma describe the legacy of Livingstone I couldn’t help but believe this was the blessing and the hope. The suffering of Africa continues. Although there have been two years of good crops and things are looking up it is a precarious success given the challenges which persist. Gathered for worship in the new sanctuary of Bandawe I knew our contribution helped to bring the project to fruition just as our funding has built the school at Chivumu, yet the healing Livingstone hoped for was not what I brought in my hands, but what abided in my heart. As I sang and prayed, I was with your brothers and sister, your fathers and mothers, your, my family in Christ.

When Peter made his case in Jerusalem for the Gentiles who believed in Caesarea, this was his point. They are not other anymore, they are ours. And I’ve come to believe that the dream of John at Patmos, the dream of a new heaven and a new earth, it will come in the great bye and bye, but it I get to see it now; we get a tour so to speak when our fellowship knows no bounds of culture or color, when our compassion has no limit but the blood of Christ which saves us all.

After reading Livingstone’s grave I needed to sit down. I was a bit overwhelmed by my emotions. Sitting in the nave looking at the lofty ceilings and the way the diffused light played off the columns and the statues I was soothed by the enormity of the place. The sanctuary was big like heaven. And then I looked at my shoes and laughed. When I leave Malawi they are always rimmed with the red dust of the clay soil. It is a little bit of Africa that lingers. And then I notice there was a clump by the heel. So I moistened my finger and rubbed it into the dirt making a thin mud.

I am sure if I had asked or made an announcement my next action would lead to being permanently banned from Westminster Abbey, so quietly I walked to Livingstone’s grave and knelt. Reaching down I ran my finger along the crevice until all the Malawian soil was gone. This is not something one can verify, but I felt David Livingstone smile knowing a friend had brought a bit of Africa to soothe his wait for the dream of John to be complete.

Africa is an open sore. It is. And in this suffering our friends do dwell. As a church we could merely wait for the great bye and bye, yet I am glad that we are bold like Peter to find those whom God has called, those we now call brothers and sisters, our friends and family. Amen.