O God, who moved upon the waters in the manner of creation, move upon the waters of our hearts and speak new things into existence so that we being so renewed, may be able to worship you in spirit and in truth. Grant that this sermon will be a vehicle of comfort in your name, to bring to all a sense of heavenly presence and great trust in you. And may the peace of Christ, that peace that passes all human understanding, abide with us and rest upon all of us who mourn, as we pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Wiltshire and I loved to sit outside the little house, a shack that stood on the elevation behind and above the main house, and watch the entries and exits of the day. With pieces of smoked chicken and favourite drinks in our hands, we reflected on the old and new things of life. And upon one of the rocks in a corner often lay a dog and a cat not caring about our conversation after eating their fill. The dogs always notified us in their rude style when an intruder started to mount our little mountain.
In our reflections we sometimes saw very clear images of life, yet at other times saw rather shadowy images of life. And we became what Salman Rushdie might call the ‘photographers of entries and exits’. From there we floated into the art of critiquing our recent works. Here is one sample of such endeavours. The poem is called ‘Jail House Muck’ by Wiltshire Johnson, and he would read it in his baritone voice. He taught me to read with that voice but never succeeded. It is a bit longwinded but I have no apologies for that. In particular those who wish to see our prisons reformed should listen more keenly.
1. They lie, that’s nothing strange, for them
Truth has no meaning anymore;
They steal, no reason is required,
I’d never seen their kind before;
They’d raped, for fun only for fun,
I cringe to breathe the air we share;
There are murderers, some in cold blood
I shudder, what else do I dare—
My fellow prisoners, this they are,
A chill runs through my spine in fear.
2. They lack a conscience,
You’re made to know from the word go;
They have no reverence, show no pride,
Know nothing noble, nurse no dreams,
Hold nothing sacred, bear no qualms;
These are the slime, the slurry muck,
The stinking matter, ugly mass
The very bottom of the keg—
My fellow prisoners, yes they are
Harsh nature’s cesspit, human tear.
3. They live with lice and flees and flies,
That’s on the outside, that you see,
They harbour hate, ruthless and mean,
That’s on the inside, that you feel
Freely displayed with vulgar thrill;
Some fester with raw scabied sores,
Some wear tuberculous so thin.
True living skeletons I mean—
A vile obscenity to see
Even in a penitentiary.
4. And some had on the sneer of vice;
They look of crime, they smell of crime,
In facial contours, in their voice,
In body motion and by choice;
These ones were fostered, grown in crime,
For them no world exists besides
The walls of jail, the smudge of grime;
Added to these are the insane,
Some useless gawks, nor man nor beast—
The devil’s partners, terrorists.
5. And now you find some angel face,
Some comely features, seems out of place—
Such veil of perfect innocence.
What has he done, you wish to know
With real concern in sympathy:
He stabbed his mother in the heart,
Dismembered her, ripped her apart.
Your mouth fills up with taste of bile,
Your stomach churns, you want to throw;
Can demons look so saintly though?
6. In most you sense a painful void,
Empty of background, crude, uncouth,
The animal in natal truth,
Callousness in misguided youth;
They’d lost their sense of self esteem,
They’d grovel in the dirt, I’d seen
Some fight like dogs for scraps of food,
What dignity there may remain
Is quickly crushed by threats of pain;
Violence rules at every plane.
7. Sensual feelings pour untamed
Parading passion free of guise
While gloating on an enterprise
Of stark sexual depravity—
The younger prisoners serve the old
Mortgage their body to survive,
Selling their bottoms for a price
In drugs or cash or plates of rice;
Diseases due to sodomy
Ravage this penal colony.
8. Prison is house of cruelty
Bereft of love and sympathy;
It kills whatever good it can
And feeds the worst the beast in man;
The prisoner is a muffled wretch,
A wreck of warped identity
Locked in with gall and misery.
Treated like pig, he lives like pig,
He thinks like pig and talks like pig;
Finally he becomes a pig.
That was Wiltshire. After such sharing we would then travel mentally to places of the world that we visited whether intentionally or by accident; and then talked about our homes of origin before reflecting on the people we added to our world. Wiltshire never left out of his list his late brother Prof. Victor Ogafor Ibikunle Johnson and his late son Paul that was swallowed by the roaring wicked sea—to him Paul never died, he was only swallowed by the sea.
We both recognised that we made mistakes in life. And we shared in honest confession some of those mistakes—juxtaposing our priestly roles in no planned order. And we know that Jesus our great high priest received those confessions with compassion. In the same way that broken pots are mended we believed that our broken lives could also be healed and our broken relationships mended. This experience was not confined to Wiltshire and I. You are not human if you never experienced a broken relationship. Sometimes time can play a great role in the healing process but we know that God who carries the stars on the palm of His hand can heal in such a way that no indelible scars remain.
When I visited him in hospital on one occasion we both could not speak. It was like a courtroom where silence had sentenced the culpable duet from friendship beyond silence to unending tears that flowed through the forests of Russia, America ending in Waterloo. I know he would have loved to say the chorus with which he loved to say farewell at our parting; ‘Jack, I know God loves me and I don’t need anyone to tell me’. If you check your Bible you will notice that Wiltshire was quoting from Psalm 56:9 ‘When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.’
In real life, four facts we hate to face are as follows:
1. We grow older not younger,
2. We can only claim dividends from what we invested,
3. That each day brings us closer to our death, and
4. There is judgment day and in that we face the consequences of our action.
As a matter of fact we preach our own funerals daily while we live. According to Romans 14:7, ‘None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself’. Wiltshire, while he lived, touched many lives and in the process preached his own sermon. You may say he did not touch you because you were never his student. But I daresay he did touch you if you ever bought drugs at the cost recovery in Connaught Hospital. Indeed the cost recovery project was his idea while he served as Minister of Health—it was so that the poor could access cheaper drugs. We all need that today knowing that you cannot walk out of any doctor’s surgery without a prescription. Wiltshire touched you if you loved to use the wonder stove—it was his original idea. He first tried it some 30 years ago and even introduced it to the cooks at Fourah Bay College. He worked very closely with Mr During who carried the vision forward. He touched you if you tasted of the smoked chicken from Marvick. I can assure you that there are persons sitting here who would admit that their lives got a lift because they encountered Wiltshire S. B. Johnson. I can assure you that Wiltshire did not let his alma mater the Prince of Wales School down. He was the first to go down to Burmeh and convert the refuse to fuel which powered a steam turbine. I was also told that he built an electric pot for preparing food for the boys of the boarding home at the Albert Academy School and that that pot is still good.
Need I say that he was an inventor? Need I say that Wiltshire was an educationist? Need I say that he was a poet? Need I say that he was an entrepreneur? When he came out of political incarceration his cousin in America Mrs Ola Dunn invited him to go and live with her but he said ‘No, I still have a lot to give to my country’. How come no government has promoted this man in the true sense of that word? I am sure that with the right support Sierra Leone would be boasting of a locally designed production factory by now. In this country Sierra Leone what we do best is to give laurels to our stars when they have died. Laurels in the form of tributes. Now Wiltshire is going to enrich the earth in Kissy Road with all that wealth of knowledge. Ultimately he will give everything back to God who gave him the talents on loan. Above all we should not forget that he was a husband and a father. There is a sense of an aching void as we think of one that we loved who is gone. We miss the companionship of our loved ones and our grief is deeply personal. I am sure that at this moment, Luba, Wiltshire Johnson Jr. and his wife Lauretu, Natasha, the grand children Jessica, Alexander and Andre, Mr Emile Wright and many other close relatives, all feel the pain of parting. Probably you are watching the video of his life, played back in your mind’s eye, as you sit here.
That is why in as much as we take the comforting words of 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, we value this fellowship where we enjoy the company of friends and other loved ones. God gave you to us even for a time like this. As a family we also appreciate His Excellency the President and his government for allowing that this be made a civic funeral in recognition of the fact of Wiltshire’s contributions to national development.
Whatever friends and loved ones may do or time may bring, God is our supreme source of comfort. To those who are cast down He comes to lift up our subdued spirits. He calls upon us to find refuge in Him. The Psalmist in chapter 55:2 says, ‘Attend unto me, and hear me: I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise.’ The writer to the Hebrews says in chapter 4:16, ‘Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.’ We know that death is a reminder. The Bible teaches that we must have sober thoughts about life and death. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, ‘It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart’.
Indeed death will one day be destroyed. But death in our world should remind us of eternal death. And David says in 1 Samuel 20:3, ‘Yet as surely as the LORD lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death’. And Revelation 21:4 says, ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’.
I would like to end with my own short poem composed for this occasion.
The Journey of the Loner
(To Wiltshire Samuel Bomotilewa Johnson, Ph.D)
Tapered trust
Taunted and tried
In the wars of the world
What you won
Was long willed
By the wilier of winners
You are just another package of dreams
Packed by a world of non-dreamers
The stars you set on fire
From the chemistry of speech
Will stay lighted and brilliant
Except they choose to be miscreant
As missing links in their missions
Oh Salone the loner
You have just packed another loner
Another packet of dreams
Because you fail to see the dreams
Because they shine not as you deem
Maybe you lost your very steam
Oh my brother
The insoluble soul of Salone
Seal of the seers
Go get your laurels
Only be guided not to miss
The lane of laurel takers
Lured only by the crown
In the hand of the laurel giver
The conversations you posited here
Will converse for as long as you crack on
About which Americans or Russians spied on heaven
About where God sat when He made the sad things
About the darker things that men dream of dashing their kind
Things that lions never dream of doing their kind
With a look at the verse in vogue
The spirit you gave birth to
Will give birth to your kind
But over there yes over there
Our quarters may be close
And the conversation will continue
Just maybe
Only maybe
To all present here I would like to say that Wiltshire preached his funeral sermon while he lived—so the sermon preached here this afternoon was not meant for him but all of us who happen to be alive. Please remember that there is death; and life will continue after death—to be lived in heaven or hell. The family would have me thank all of you for the beautiful flowers, sympathy cards, the warm handshakes and sympathetic statements of the last few days. May the soul of our dear brother so departed through the mercy of God find peace in God.
Let us pray:
Dear God we ask you to heal and comfort the bereaved. Be near them in their sorrow, and let their sorrow draw them nearer to you. Now that earthly joys and comfort fail, may the things unseen and eternal grow more real, more present, and fuller of meaning. Let your strength be our strength; and your peace be our peace to fill our minds with perfect trust in you; through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.
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