A A man in sweats leans on a cane and wobbles onto the already crowded stage of Thomas Jefferson High and speaks into a microphone held up to his face by someone else's hands. He wants what most in the auditorium seem to want: a miracle from Billy Burke, the senior pastor of the Miracle Center World Outreach Inc.
Actually, the man wants "another big miracle." The last time Billy laid hands on him, the man says, Burke cured him of quadriplegia. That was across the street at the Doubletree a couple of years ago. Burke now performs his miracles at Thomas Jefferson High. The man tells Burke and the audience that he now wants to be able to stand up on his own. Not necessarily to stand without using his metal cane — Burke relieves him of it anyway and tosses it to one of several assistants on stage — but to get up off the floor without assistance.
You don't have to be a prophet to see where this is going. In order to get up from the floor, one must first get down on the floor. Burke can help with this too. He lays a hand on the man's fleshy face, pushes him backward into the waiting arms of his helpers — sort of like the bouncers on the Jerry Springer Show, only in suits.
The guy stays down several minutes. Perhaps he is trying to get psyched up to get up.
In his own due time, he attempts to stand. This does not happen finger-snap fast, the way one might expect miracles to happen. And as kooked out as this may sound, there seems to be a collective straining of people mentally trying to help him stand. First on all fours, then stuck genuflecting, one hand on the stage floor, he struggles to rise.
Burke conducts Miracle Healing Services at Thomas Jefferson High — a Hillsborough County public school — right beneath the banner of the school mascot: a dragon, a symbol of evil, akin to serpents.
There's another irony to this event. It was Mr. Thomas Jefferson who in 1802 wrote a famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, which said that "the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
Interestingly enough, the church-state partition is not mentioned in the Constitution or Bill of Rights beyond the First Amendment, which simply says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
The wall of which Jefferson spoke has been coming down in dribs and slabs over the years. Occasionally, it will get a little mortar patch, like last year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe that student-led prayer at school football games is a no-no.
As a result, says Hillsborough County Schools spokesman Mark Hart, "the litmus test is the extent to which religious observation is voluntary in nature."
Hart faxed the Planet a document called "Statement on Religion and the Schools," which spells out Hillsborough County's tight-rope policies on religion in the institution: "Pre-football invocations violate the Establishment clause of the constitution," it says. And educators "must exercise extreme caution not to endorse the religious dogma of … holidays." They get into tricky legal territory when it comes to using school premises for religious instruction after school hours. Doing so, "except on a temporary basis, violates the principle of separation of church and state."
Hart says the County sets no time limit on how long a group or church can use school grounds, though agreements do have to be cut on an annual basis. He also added that the most typical scenario is for a church to stay in a school for four to six months while building a facility of its own.
The impression Burke gives onstage, however, is that the stay will be if not permanent, lengthy.
"For those of you that go to the Miracle Center … and church that I pastor, the good news I have for you tonight, starting in February, this will be our new meeting place every week. Every week." Doesn't sound temporary at all.
It takes long enough for the healing to begin. First there's a full half-hour of Christian music and singing provided by three female singers and a headset-wearing keyboardist backed up by a drummer on a Premier kit. The crowd is sparse and spread out, but during the next half-hour more folks shuffle in. Some use canes; some have humps in the back; others look simply tired or poor, with their families in tow, grandparents and sleepy children. A pair of young moms rolls in late, their babies asleep in strollers. One guy looks sort of like Jesus in denim jacket and jeans.
Billy Burke takes the stage, dressed in a banana-yellow suit and cream penny loafers. His luminous cufflinks and shiny ring twinkle. The entire stage is his pulpit.
"Welcome to our very first gathering of our group," Billy says as the applause dies down. A man wipes tears from his eyes. He's there with a boy whose head is down on one of the folding desktops, where it stays most of the three hours I am there.
"We've never done any service on Saturday night, and I thought why not now?" Burke says.
He asks us why we're here. "How many of ya are desperate tonight for Je-zus!" More applause, followed by a quiet moment.
"What a night, what a place, what a time," he says very earnestly, the keyboards adding flavor, helping Burke transcend the faux potted plants and plastic chairs of this plain auditorium. When he works up to a frenzy, the keyboardist is like a jazz player working around him, playing faster and louder. Burke resembles a younger Jerry Stiller as he dances, prances and preaches on the public school auditorium stage of Thomas Jefferson High School, but he sounds more like Michael Buffer, of the famous "Ready to Rumble" franchise.
After the intro, it's time for a disclaimer. In so very many words, Billy tells the flock they have only themselves to blame if they don't get a miracle tonight.
"The reason some of you don't get a breakthrough is because you don't realize that you're giving to God," he says before the envelopes are passed out. We have to have faith in the money, we are told.
"You can't buy your breakthrough. But what you do is you put a value on it. See, God's watching what value you put on it … if you said by saying with your mouth, "I believe I'm gonna get a miracle, then why wouldn't you put your money behind that?'" he queries of the congregation, a gnarly mix of young and old, big hair, thinning hair and ratty shoes. One young boy snoozes in the aisle.
Video crews document the spectacle, and Billy mentions something about his services airing in different places.
"See when I walked into this building tonight, myself, I know why I'm here. I'm on a mission. I'm not here to make friends, shake hands. Could care less. I'm on a mission tonight."
He urges the assembled not to get too caught up in the singing or anything other than getting that touch.
"When you walk somewhere on purpose, you're already en route," Burke notes. "Tonight it could happen to you. No more arthritis. No more medicine … canceled surgery … bad teeth … scoliosis. No more heart problems."
"Some of you want to give $1 for a $5,000 miracle," Burke chides the audience. He tells us to make all checks payable to the Miracle Center. Those of us paying cash are to raise our hands so ushers can bring us envelopes. I put in a tattered dollar before heading up to the stage with the rest of the flock, where we place the envelopes in a little white bucket. Burke puts on a better show than you're likely to see in most high school auditoriums; it's worth a little something.
By 10 p.m. the herd hoping to get healed by Burke is about five long on one side of the stage and 10 on the other. Most of the people have been standing there for at least an hour while the ones making it to the stage are picked from the audience. One woman has shoulder pain, pneumonia and manic-depression. "I cry all the time."
Manic depression without the euphoric mania? That's worse than double-pneumonia. This could take a while.
Were the miracle not taking place in the midst of this manic spectacle — the treacly keyboards, the Anita Bryant singing squad, the arrhythmic clapping of the assembled, the charismatic dancing — it'd be more gutwrenching than gutbusting.
As for the former quadriplegic hoping to stand, he lies like a downed boxer racing the 10-count, Billy Burke struts about the stage like a rooster or rock star.
"I feel like I'm in a Jacuzzi," he says, riffing. "Can somebody say, "I got a spa?'" His assistants, the singers and handlers, laugh.
"You don't know what I'm talking about, but I do," Burke adds. It's an unexpected dip in the service road. Considering that many of the assembled have just donated cash and checks, perhaps he is going to buy a hot tub.
Billy Burke stands over the man on the floor. "Don't look down," Burke says. "Look at me."
He gets up, slowly, awkwardly. Burke pushes him down again, and handlers pick him up. His wife joins him on stage, and Burke, holding the man's cane, taps it to get her to hurry.
The fellow who looks like Jesus in jeans speaks in a garbly Elmer Fudd accent. He's come from Dixie County. Back problems. He used to clear land up in Dixie but hasn't been able to work. Billy heals him. Later, after some more healings, Billy Burke senses there is someone in the crowd who has a hearing problem.
His first wife ran him over with a truck, the man says. How that affected his hearing is not clear.
"But she's gone?" Burke asks. "Hallelujah!" Lots of people laugh.
Burke has him stick his finger in his good ear, and walks around him.
"I hear pretty good," the Jesus man says. Under the guise of reiterating things the man is saying, Burke translates the Elmer Fudd accent. The man has a tingling feeling.
It doesn't appear that Burke will get around to all the people who have lined up by the stairs to the stage. They will instead get a prayer said for all of them. They'll have other opportunities to return to Jefferson High and get a miracle.
Contact Features Writer David Jasper at 813-248-8888, ext. 111, or jasper@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2001.