Monday, January 22, 2001
Former Abilenian Cox gives first sermon
at White Rock church
By ANGELA K. BROWN
Associated Press Writer
DALLAS (AP) — In his first sermon at his new church, a minister
presumed dead the past 16 years spoke about the Biblical account
of Jesus bringing a dead man back to life.
The Rev. James Simmons did not refer directly to his own ordeal
that began in 1984, when he says he was beaten and awoke from
a coma in Tennessee with no memory of his wife and infant daughter
in Texas.
Nor did Simmons talk about his life since then, when he lived
in Virginia and later earned degrees from a seminary near San
Francisco.
“We're here to praise our God and that alone,” he told
parishioners Sunday at White Rock Community Church, a predominantly
gay and lesbian congregation. “I pray there will be nothing
of me today ... that God will be proclaimed from this pulpit.”
Most of the 500 parishioners believe Simmons and are supporting
him, church usher Kelvin Meyers said. After the service, many
of the 270 people who attended waited line to hug Simmons.
“It was a pastor's dream as far as a first Sunday goes,”
Simmons said.
Simmons was preaching at the church in December as part of an
audition when someone recognized him as Wesley Barrett “Barre”
Cox, a Church of Christ youth minister in San Antonio who had
been missing more than a decade.
His marriage to Beth Cox, who now lives in Franklin, Tenn., was
dissolved when he was declared dead.
Simmons has since talked on the phone to his teen-age daughter
and former wife and plans to visit them soon, he said. On New
Year's Day he was reunited with his mother and brother in Frankston
in East Texas.
Speaking publicly Saturday for the first time, the 49-year-old
said he is now a celibate gay man.
“I don't know if I'd believe myself if I heard this story,”
Simmons said at a news conference. “But I can only tell you
what happened to James Simmons. I don't know what happened to
Barre Cox.”
Simmons' sermon Sunday was entitled “Tears of Jesus,”
about the Biblical account of Jesus' friend Lazarus. Simmons said
Lazarus' relatives were upset that Jesus did not help the sick
man before he died, but they later saw a miracle when Jesus brought
Lazarus back to life.
“Sometimes we look at God and blame him because we can only
see our viewpoint,” Simmons said. “We say, `If you had
been there this would not have happened.' We doubt his love; we
doubt his concern; we doubt his wisdom.”
Relatives say Cox was last seen in July 1984 traveling from Lubbock,
where he was working on his doctorate at Texas Tech University.
His ransacked car was later found near Abilene.
Simmons first said he was found beaten and bloody two weeks later
in the trunk of a car in a Memphis, Tenn., junkyard. He said he
awoke in a hospital and was told that he had been in a coma.
Recently, after Memphis police and hospitals found no records
of the incident, Simmons said he was in a small town near Memphis
but does not remember which one.
Simmons moved to Mill Valley, Calif., in 1991 to attend Golden
Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, where he earned a master of
divinity degree in 1994 and a master of theology degree in 1999.
Simmons was in California when he heard about the job opening
at White Rock.
“There will always be questions about the whole story, for
some people, but I think that we have been witness to a miracle,”
Meyers said.
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www.whiterockchurch.org
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Copyright ©2001,
Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps. Publications
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