LIFT
EVERY VOICE AND SING
Mount Hope
UMC
Sunday,
February 9, 2020
Lift Every Voice and Sing
Church,
it’s Black History month. This is the
month where everyone celebrates the lives and contributions of African
Americans. However, those who are
African American celebrate our heritage each every day of our lives. But this morning, in that spirit and with
your approval, I want to use our Black national anthem and supporting scripture
as our sermon message. Is that all right
with you? Thank you.
James
Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson must have been inspired by God when they
penned the song because each stanza has a connection to scripture. Let’s take a close look at the words of the
song and visit it from a different perspective.
Many of you learned this song in college if you attended an HBCU.
“Lift
every voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of
Liberty.” We know that when praises go
up, blessings come down. David sang in
Psalm 68:6a, “God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners
with singing.” Like the Israelites, we
were once prisoners in a foreign land.
During slavery, it was the songs that eased the burden of the slave
masters’ whip. It was in the shame of
our nakedness on the auction block that we sang songs of redemption with our
tears. It was when our children were
sold from our arms that we sang songs of grief pleading with our God to put an
end to our anguish. It was in this
darkness of our souls that we prayed Jeremiah 8:21-22, “Since my people are
crushed, I am crushed, I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of
my people?
“Let
our rejoicing rise High as the list'ning skies, let it resound loud as the rolling
sea.” When we were freed from slavery,
we sang songs of thanks and praise to God, our strength and our redeemer! Psalm 89:1 – “I will sing of the Lord’s great
love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.” During the Civil Rights movement we sang the
Old Negro spiritual, “We Shall Overcome”.
We stood on the promises of God and told the story of how we would
overcome adversity someday.
“Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us. Sing a song full of
the
hope that the present has brought us.”
We proclaimed the words of Psalm 105:2, “Sing to him, sing praise to
him; tell of all is wonderful acts.” Our
freed slave forefathers and mothers praised God for their freedom. During the Civil Rights movement, when the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, we believed that all former
things had passed away and that God would be doing a new thing for us by
opening up opportunities that had never been available to us. Little did we know we still had to fight
uphill battles to be considered for better paying jobs, to be able to buy homes
in nicer neighborhoods, be able to vote in elections so as to determine our own
future, to go to whatever school we wanted in our neighborhoods, to get loans
at the same rate as our white brothers and sisters. In reality, we were partially free, but it
was better than the chains that had formerly bound us.
“Facing the rising sun of our new day begun Let us march on till victory is won.” Lamentations 3:22-24 (NKJV) says,” Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” God’s mercies are new with the dawn of each new da. We sing songs of hope and encouragement and when we don’t’’ have words to sing, we hum and moan because the enemy can’t understand our moaning’s and groanings.
The
Israelites wandered the desert looking for the Promised Land for 40 years and
it was right in their eyesight. We were
slaves in a land that was not our native land for over 200 years. Four generations passed before the Israelites
entered the Promised Land. After over
200 years we, as a people, are still wandering in the desert awaiting our
Promised Land. Oh, some of us think we
have attained it because we have important jobs and nice cars and big houses,
but let me assure you, we have not, as a people, come into our Promised
Land. We still have a way to go. We still have some marching to do. As the words of the hymn “Beams of Heaven”
says, “Beams of heaven as I go, through this wilderness below, guide my feet in
peaceful ways, turn my midnights into days.
When in the darkness I would grope, faith always sees a star of hope,
and soon from all life’s grief and danger I shall be free someday. I do not know how long ‘twill be, nor what
the future holds for me, but this I know: if Jesus leads me, I shall get home
someday. We always knew that we had hope
in Jesus. Our freedom, our very lives
were built upon the hope of Jesus blood and righteousness, so we face every
adversity put before us with our faith that if God be for us who can be against
us (Romans 8:31).
“Stony
the road we trod, Bitter the chast'ning rod Felt in the day that hope unborn
had died.” 1 Peter 5:10 comforts us – “In his kindness God called you to
share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So, after you have
suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he
will place you on a firm foundation.”
Like
the Israelites who were slaves in Egypt they just accepted their condition as
natural and could see no way out. Their
days we extremely harsh filled with extreme heat and impossible goals making
brick from straw. Our forefathers felt a
sense of hopelessness in their enslavement.
Taken from their countries and families to a new and foreign land, they
had no concept of how they would return to the land they knew and loved; to
their tribe; to their former lives.
Brought to a harsh new land against their will, beaten, forced into hard
labor, sold at the whim of the master, made to breed like animals; this was all
against anything they knew or experienced in their homeland. Yet they survived and we are the result. Our parents and grandparents had it
rough. Many were sharecroppers and in
low paying jobs trying to make ends meet.
In jobs where they had to work under harsh conditions, not able to shop
in the best stores and getting seconds when they did shop, fear of retribution
by their new masters, afraid of having a cross burned in their yard, or a noose
around their neck and swinging from a tree on the whim of any false report. In more recent years, facing the dogs and the
water hoses. Being turned away when
someone else of another persuasion was allowed in; having to sit in the back of
the bus or movie theater. Or, when I was
growing up, Blacks sat upstairs in the balcony at the local movie theater and
whites sat downstairs. The theater owner
didn’t realize that upstairs was the better seats because there was a section
in the back in the corner in the dark for the lovers and then there was the
front seats of the balcony where the kids would throw popcorn over the balcony
on the folks downstairs. I never did
that though. Even the concession stand
was segregated.
“Yet with a steady beat Have not
our weary feet Come to the place on which our fathers sighed.” Psalm 57:7 (NKJV) – “My heart is
confident in you, O God; my heart is
confident. No wonder I can sing your
praises!” Many times, our forefathers and mothers
planned their escape from the harsh whip of the slave master. They devised secret messages to send to one
another about their escape plans and many were in songs like “Steal Away” - Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus! Steal away,
steal away home, I hain't got long to stay here”, and other songs of the
Underground Railroad, like "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd". The
song's title is said to refer to the star formation (an asterism) known in America as the Big Dipper and in
Europe as The Plough. The pointer stars of the Big Dipper align
with the North Star. In this song the repeated line
"Follow the Drinkin' Gourd" is thus often interpreted as instructions
to escaping slaves to travel north by following the North Star, leading them
to the northern states, Canada, and freedom: The song ostensibly encodes escape
instructions and a map from Mobile, Alabama up the Tombigbee River, over the
divide to the Tennessee River, then downriver to where the Tennessee and Ohio
rivers meet in Paducah, Kentucky. Another song with a reportedly
secret meaning is "Now Let Me Fly" which references the biblical
story of Ezekiel's Wheels. The song talks mostly of a promised land. This
song might have boosted the morale and spirit of the slaves, giving them hope
that there was a place waiting that was better than where they were.
"Go Down Moses", was another spiritual that depicts the biblical
story of Moses in Exodus leading his people to
freedom, is believed by some to be a coded reference to the conductors on
the Underground
Railroad.
The oppressor in the song is the pharaoh, but in real life would have
been the slave owner.
Or,
“Encourage my soul and let us travel on.
For the night is dark and I am far from home. Praise be to God, the morning light
appears. The storm is passing over, the
storm is passing over, the storm is passing over, Hallelu!”
“We
have come over a way that with tears has been watered; We have come, treading
our path through the blood of the slaughtered.”
Jeremiah 17:8 – “They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with
roots that reach deep into the water. Such
trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop
producing fruit.”
The
Israelites faced being conquered by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the
Philistines. Our forefathers and mothers
faced being sold into slavery by conquering tribes and then to be caught in the
Civil War.
Our
ancestors were violently raped, stood under overseers’ whip and hung in the
cover of dark by the Klan, faced Bull Connor’s attack dogs and water hoses,
George Wallace’s police batons, shot down by the authorities whose salaries we
pay to protect us. But brothers and sisters,
to paraphrase Maya Angelou’s famous poem, still we rise! Billie Holiday sang the song, “Strange Fruit”,
about “Southern
trees bearing strange fruit; Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots. Black bodies swinging in the southern
breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the
poplar trees.”
“Out
from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last Where the white gleam of our
star is cast.” Galatians 5:1(NKJV) - “So Christ has
truly set us free. Now make sure that
you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.” This verse tells how we came out of the
darkness into His marvelous light.
Brought out of captivity and the bondage of slavery and the civil rights
movement. We can sing “Can’t nobody turn
me around, turn me around, turn me around.”
And we can declare with a shout of victory of how we got over. See, Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV) reminds us “For we
do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,
against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
“God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far on the way.” Psalm 107:6 (NKJV) - “Then they
cried out to the Lord in their trouble, And He
delivered them out of their distresses.”
Just as he delivered David from his enemies, God delivered us from the
snare of the fowler. He did not leave us
nor forsake us. We are the righteousness
of God. His children and he will protect
and sustain us against all those who try to destroy us, just as he kept the
Israelites safe from the Egyptians. We
have come this far by faith, leaning on the everlasting arms of Jesus Christ.
“Thou who has by thy
might Led us into the light Keep us forever in the path, we pray.” Psalm 119:75 (NKJV) – “And I will
walk at liberty, For I seek Your precepts.” Walk in the light, the beautiful light! Walk where the dew drops of mercy shine
bright. We are children of the light
redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus.
There is no longer the dark stain of sin on us. We are indeed free at last, free at last,
thank God almighty we are free at last!
“Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee. Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the
world, we forget thee.” Proverbs 3:26 (NKJV) – “For the Lord will be
your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught.” Psalm 121 (NKJV) tells us to “I will lift up my
eyes to the hills—From whence comes my help?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved;
He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold,
He who keeps Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right
hand. The sun shall not strike you by
day, Nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve
you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your
coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.”
We are children of the King. All the days of my life I want Jesus to walk
with me. I shall not be moved because he
has delivered me and put me high upon a rock.
He is the Rock of my salvation; the Great I Am; the First and the Last.
“Shadowed beneath thy hand May we forever stand True to our God,
True to our native land.” We should have
the confidence to stand firm on our insurance policy in Psalm 91 (NJKV) – “He who dwells in the
secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the
Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My
God, in Him I will trust.”
Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from
the perilous pestilence. He shall cover
you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His
truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by
night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of
the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the
destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten
thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look and
see the reward of the wicked. Because
you have made the Lord, who is my
refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place, No evil shall
befall you, Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; For
He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. In their hands they
shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, the
young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot. “Because he has set his love upon Me,
therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he
has known My name. He
shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with
him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and
show him My salvation.”
Nothing and no
one can stand against us. Not one
thing. If we only will lift our voices
in praise to God for the things he has done, is doing and will do. As he promises in Deuteronomy 28:6-7 (NKJV),
God will bless our coming in and bless us when we go out. His Angel Armies are encamped all around
us. The Lord will grant that our enemies
who rise up against us will be defeated before us. No weapon formed against us shall prosper and
every tongue that rises against us, we shall prove wrong. They will come at us from one direction but
flee from us in seven.
Let us now all
stand and join hands and sing with confidence our battle song - “We Shall
Overcome” on page 533 of the United Methodist Hymnal (for those of you who may
not be familiar with the hymnal, it is the red book under the pew seats).
