“Why We Still Sing Songs of Jubilee”

A sermon by the Rev. Robert M. Hardies

All Souls Church, Unitarian

Washington, D.C.

Sunday, 18 November 2007

Ms. Joyce Palmer: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born a free black woman in Baltimore in 1825.  Later she moved to Philadelphia and joined the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.  She became one of the most celebrated black authors of the 19^th Century, using poetry to examine racial and gender division.  On this Sunday morning, when we explore the ongoing power of the songs of jubilee, I want to share with you her poem called “Song for the People.”

Let me make the songs for the people, songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres, for carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men with more abundant life.

Let me make songs for the weary, amid life's fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension, and careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children, before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty, to float o'er life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged, when shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions, where there shall be no night.

Our world, so worn and weary, needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow, till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender girdle the world with peace.

Rev. Hardies:  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  [Silence]  Let’s try that again:  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  [Response:  Happy Thanksgiving!]  Amen, amen.  All right.  My heart is full of gratitude for many things this holiday season, many of them relating to the church.  Joyce was too modest to mention it in her prayers today, but this week the Committee on Ministry has recommended to the congregation that on December 2 we vote to ordain Joyce Palmer to the Unitarian Universalist ministry.  [Cheers and sustained applause]  It’s good news, it’s good news and, important theological news to know as well that in our religious tradition, you aren’t a minister until a gathered community of people who know you and love you say that you are.  It’s not a bishop who confirms a person’s call to ministry; it is a congregation.  So I hope you’ll join us on December 2 for that important vote, as well as passing the budget and some other things, too, which are also important!

I’m also thankful this morning for the musicians in our church.  Today we continue our celebration of the Jubilee Singers for thirty years of making a joyful noise in this church.  [Applause]  Congratulations.  I hope you went to that concert last weekend; they did a lovely concert last weekend.  I especially want to remember and honor today four people who have been with the Jubilee Singers from the very beginning, who have sung with them now for 30 years.  Of course, they were just children when they joined the choir.  Lucy Summers over here, stand up Lucy.  Bob Murray.  Esther Strongman here and Mary Ann Anderson in a pew right there.  [Sustained applause]  Thank you all.  And there’s someone I’m forgetting; who’s that guy who directs . . . oh Leonard Starks, Leonard Starks, the Director, yes! [Sustained applause]   

You know, five years ago we celebrated the 25^th Anniversary of the Jubilee Singers and I preached a sermon on the history of the songs of jubilee, the history of the spirituals and freedom songs.  We talked about their origins in the Hebrew bible and the book of Leviticus.  You may not know that the word “jubilee” comes from the Hebrew word “jobel,” [sp?] which is the word for “ram,” because it is said in the Bible that at the beginning of the year of jubilee, the ram’s horn, the shofar, was to sound, proclaiming a year in which all the captives would be set free, a year in which all the debts in the land would be forgiven.  Jubilee meant freedom; jubilee meant amnesty, back in the time when “amnesty” was a good word.  [Laughter]  Have you noticed, it’s funny, how words change in Washington.  Have you noticed that now “amnesty” is a bad word in Washington?  How it’s used by politicians to say that undocumented immigrants can’t become citizens in this country.  “No amnesty!” they say.  I’m getting ahead of myself in the sermon right now.  [Laughter]  Pull back!  Pull back!

In this nation, in the 19^th Century, when slaves were emancipated, they understood their freedom in the context of the biblical jubilee.  Instead of blowing trumpets or blowing the shofar, they sang songs -- songs of freedom.  So five years ago, we talked about the history of jubilee, but today I want us to ask another question, a question that I hear bubbling up in the culture from time to time and especially lately.  It’s a question about the ongoing meaning and even the validity of the songs of jubilee.  Maybe you’ve heard a question that sounds something like this.  You know, people will say, “Emancipation, Rob, was 140 years ago.  Isn’t this whole notion of jubilee a little outdated?”  You know, “Shouldn’t we just forget about the whole thing and move on?”  I heard a question like this just recently, so let me give you a concrete example.

I was in New York last weekend at the Whitney Museum to see an exhibit of the African-American woman artist, Kara Walker.  Walker is famous and controversial for her large-scale tableaus that sometimes take up an entire room, of silhouettes of characters, racist characters, stereotypical characters from slavery.  Images like the Uncle Tom and the sexually predatory master and the pickininny.  She uses these ugly images to prick America’s conscience about racism and sexism.  The title of her New York show speaks to the complexity of the relationship between the races. The title is called “My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love.”  If you’re not familiar with Kara Walker, you can go down to the Museum of American Art here in D.C. right now.  One of her newest works is on display downtown.

Now Walker’s art has provoked fierce responses, positive and negative, from all races.  Recently, at one of her public talks, a white man raised his hand and asked Walker a question, a variation on the kind of question I’m talking about.  He said to her essentially, “Ms. Walker, isn’t it time to move on from slavery?”  You know, “How much longer are you going to bring it up?  How much longer are you going to use these images in your artwork?”  Kara Walker paused for a moment, she thought about it and she said, “Well, probably as long as I’m black [Laughter], and as long as I’m a woman.”  And that little incident struck me because I have a similar reaction when I hear folks say to me, “Aren’t these freedom songs getting a little old?”  You know, “When are you going to stop singing those freedom songs?”  I’ve got to say to them “Well, when there’s justice in the land I’ll stop singing them.”  We’re going to need to sing freedom songs as long as there is injustice in the land, as long as there are captives who must be set free, we must sing the songs of jubilee.  As long as there is racism in our land, we must sing songs of freedom.  We’re going to sing the songs of jubilee until we hear that trumpet sound, that shofar, that ram’s horn, inaugurating the year of jubilee. 

I want to spend a little bit of time this morning talking about racism because implicit in these questions that I’m hearing is an assumption, I think, that the history of racism in America is something that’s behind us now, that it’s something we better just sort of turn away from and forget.  And for a long time, I remember back in the ‘80s and the ‘90s, when we talked about race, we talked about how racism had gone underground, how it had become a little more subtle and tricky, how it had become embedded in systems and economies and institutions, that it wasn’t as overt as it had been previously in America, but it was still as strong and as powerful.  But lately that seems to be changing again.  Lately I have been seeing the ugly and violent head of racism of racism rear itself again in our culture.  It started in the response to Hurricane Katrina.  And I felt it again last year with the whole incident about the Jena Six, down in Jena, Louisiana.  **************

But it’s gotten even stronger now recently.  Since September, the Southern Poverty Law Center has reported between 40 and 50 hate crimes involving the hanging of nooses in America.  And it’s not just in Louisiana.  Just a few weeks ago, on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park, they found a noose hanging from a tree.  On the door of a professor at Columbia University, an African-American professor at Columbia University, a noose hanging outside her office door.  In Prince William County in September, immigrants woke up and looked on their doorstep in the morning and found leaflets from the Ku Klux Klan, issuing a call to “white Christian America” to put an end to all non-white immigration in this country.  This is right on our doorsteps, friends!  And this overt racism is just the tip of the iceberg because it belies something even deeper. 

You know, Jena Six wasn’t just about nooses hanging in a schoolyard; it was about our criminal justice system.  In that case, a group of black boys under the age of 18, were tried as adults for a schoolyard fight while the white boys who hung the noose from that same schoolyard tree were slapped on the wrist.  And of course the leaflets in Prince William County are indicative of, you’ve seen it, a widespread and very mainstream sentiment, anti-immigrant sentiment, that is spreading across our land now.  I feel that today immigrants are what black people were in the ‘60s and ‘70s, what gay people were in the ‘90s and early 2000s.  They are scapegoats; they are being used by politicians, demonized to raise money and in fund-raising letters and to turn out votes in November.  And if you think that just one political party is responsible for that, then you need to follow the whole flap around Hillary Clinton and drivers’ licenses for immigrants in the State of New York.  This is much broader than any one political party.

We must sing songs of jubilee because the work of jubilee lies ahead of us still.  That work is not done.  [Applause]  What is the work of jubilee?  What is jubilee work?  I know what jubilee songs are, but what is jubilee work?  What in the life of our church represents jubilee work?  I think about the groups of people, over 50 people, that we sent last spring to rebuild homes and rebuild lives in New Orleans.  We’re going to send two more groups this spring to New Orleans and I hope that some of you who didn’t go last year will choose to come this year.  We’re also going to have an inter-generational trip this year so children can come and help in that.  But it’s not only that.  It’s also about advocating here in Washington as we’re doing for greater resources for the people of New Orleans.  That’s jubilee work.  Jubilee work also involves feeding our neighbors, as we do every week over at Christ House.  Jubilee work is about advocating for affordable housing in our neighborhood where housing prices are rising, ten, fifteen percent a year.

I want to announce this morning a very significant piece of information.  You may have read it in the Washington Post on Tuesday.  On Tuesday, at a rally over in Anacostia, Adrian Fenty, Mayor Fenty announced that he will be devoting 25 million new dollars in affordable housing in the City of Washington DC and he’s going to begin – because that work was instigated by organizing here at All Souls Church – he’s going to begin in the next two years by preserving 500 units of affordable housing right in the neighborhood of this church. That is jubilee work! [Applause] 

And of course, every year on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we take a special collection in our service for our social justice work, for our jubilee work, and I hope that you will give generously to that. 

So we sing songs of jubilee because the work of jubilee is still before us. But there are other reasons we sing songs of jubilee.  I sing songs of jubilee to give strength and joy to the work of jubilee.  I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get the feeling that the work of justice-making, the work of peace-making can sometimes be a little hard, a little lonely.  Sometimes we need a little shot in the arm; sometimes we need a little spirit.  And the songs of jubilee bring joy and spirit to our work.  I think of the quote from the old activist, Emma Goldman.  Emma Goldman once said “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.”  [Laughter]  And I feel the same way:  If I can’t sing I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.  We need joy and we need sprit to infuse our work for social justice.  What did Frances Ellen Watkins Harper say in our reading this morning?  She said “The world so worn and weary needs music pure and strong.”  Yes it does!  And so do we.  [To Leonard Starks]  Not yet, that’s too early; I’ve got a little more to go.  He’s jumping his cue.  We’ve got a surprise here at the end of the sermon and Leonard’s all excited.  [Laughter]  You think we already did this once on Sunday morning; we would have it down by now, right?  [Laughter]

I feel the strength of a song that’s jubilee every Sunday in church when we sing them.  But I also feel their strength at times when we’ve been out marching in the city and we bring songs of jubilee to the streets of the city.  You know, you’ve been around this city for a few years, you’ve been to some of these marches and you begin to see some patterns develop in these marches down on the Mall.  One of the patterns that I’ve noticed is that when we go down and march as a church, they always stick us with all the other religious people who are marching and I’ve noticed that it’s really the same people who show up at the religious section of the marches every time.  It’s basically the Unitarians and the Quakers [Laughter].  And there’s a smattering of other progressive Protestants and there are some lefty nuns that join us as well [Laughter].  But, especially given the size of our denomination, it’s really the Unitarians and the Quakers.  So it’s incumbent upon the Unitarians to bring the music to the streets and we always bring some choir folks with us when we march on Washington and we sing, what do we sing, “Wade in the Water,” and we sing “Yonder Come Day.” 

One time we marched to “Spirit of Life.”  You wouldn’t think “Spirit of Life” was a song we could march to, but I remember vividly the day that we sang “Spirit of Life” on the streets of Washington.  It was a few years ago during the march for women’s lives, a pro-choice march.  And I remember marching through the streets of the city.  And the marchers and the anti-march counter-protestors were just screaming vitriol at one another.  It was one of the most hateful experiences I’ve ever had. And marching through the city and experiencing all the shouting and someone from All Souls – I don’t know who it was – started singing “Spirit of Life.” And then a few other folks joined in and there were other Unitarians there as well from other churches and they started singing with us and, it was amazing what happened, it was like singing a lullaby to a baby. The shouting stopped and, at least for a moment, the hatred just kind of dissipated.

We must be the people who bring the songs of jubilee to the work of jubilee.

Let me make songs for the people, songs for the old and the young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres, for carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men with more abundant life. . . .

Our world, so worn and weary, needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

What was true in Frances Harper’s time is no less true today. As long as nooses hang on doors on College Park, Maryland, we will sing songs of jubilee. As long as immigrants in Prince William County wake up to Klan leaflets on their doorstep, we will sing songs of jubilee. As long as there are people hungry and homeless on the streets of our city, we will sing songs of jubilee. A jubilee people, doing jubilee work, singing as we go. To that, may all the people say, Amen. [Amen, and applause]