Willie the Wimp
Today's post is late but I simply could not get Blogger to work with me last night. Anyone else ever have that problem w/ Blogger? I'm working on the final sermon in a series (bleeding over from last year) on the nearness of God. This final sermon has to do with heaven, in a sense, but more with the fact that God invaded our space so we could have just a bit more than a glimpse of heaven, and that when we do his will on earth, heaven once again invades earth. I'll let you know how it goes in terms of numbers of sleepers versus listeners versus listeners with obvious interest versus our worship leader staying awake!
Anywho, I was reading (again) through some of Yancey's book, Rumors of Another World, and came across an interesting story of a two-bit Chicago gan[g]ster and rip-off artist (no, it wasn't Jesse Jackson but that would have been a good guess) by the name of Willie Stokes, Jr. Son of Flukey Stokes. The two gained a very bad reputation on the southside of Chicago — beating people up, selling drugs, becoming very rich. Junior was known in the neighborhood as "Willie the Wimp" and was somewhat immortalized by the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan in his song, "Willie the Wimp."
When Willie was murdered in 1984, his father gave him a lavish funeral followed by an equally lavish party. Willie was buried in a casket sporting a grill, tires, steering wheel, front and rear lights (that were flashing), dashboard, and trunk resembling a Cadillac Seville. Willie was propped up with his hands on the steering wheel. Fingers covered with rings and five $100-bills rolled like cigarettes stuck between his fingers. Flannery O'Connor wrote a short story with the title, "You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead." With all the flash and glitz of Willie's funeral and death party that followed, I'm sure at some point the family must have realized that Willie couldn't be any poorer than dead! Interestingly, knowing that truth we tend to continue a lifetime pursuit of trying to accumulate more. More money. More possessions. More guitars. When all along, Scripture tells us the true value of life is found in pursuing "God's will on earth as it is in heaven." A lesson I'm still trying to learn. If nothing else, this blog is worth a sermon illustration!
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Willie The Wimp "...in his Cadillac coffin...."
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