September 15, 2024

Wade in the Water

Exodus 14:21-31, John 5:1-9

Rev. Shannon Jordan

 

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. John 5:1-9

We are continuing our sermon series reflecting on the Slave Spirituals—which will culminate at our retreat in just a few weeks. This week we are exploring the themes found in the spiritual Wade in the Water, which we will be singing after the sermon, but it is printed in your bulletin.

I picked this particular spiritual because we are using it as the basis, or theme, for our art project at the retreat. We chose that as the theme because of the ways that water is important in scripture. Water is both a place of escape and retribution, like in the Exodus scripture, or the themes of water as a place of healing and a sign of the Spirit’s moving as in our second scripture. Both give a rich context through which we can reflect on the work of God in our lives and the world.

One reason that it is important for us to study the slave spirituals is because they tell the stories of people who often did not have a voice. We are a congregation of people who are trying to learn more about and to understand the roots of racism in our country so that we can work with others to fight racism in our community. These songs and the slave narratives on which they are based are a one place for us to better understand the history of our nation and the impact of slavery on many.

Late Yale University Professor Yolanda Smith did quite a bit of work with slave narratives around the spirituals and she highlighted the importance of the spirituals in Christian education. Enslaved Africans were not allowed to learn to read or write. The spirituals allowed them to learn about the basic tenets of the Christian faith—love, hope, mercy, grace, justice, judgment, death, eternal life.[i] The Spirituals allowed them to be reminded of God’s power and grace when they worked, walked, rested, and played. The spirituals spoke to them when they needed escape, retribution, healing, or the leading of the Spirit.

In her essay, Becoming Water, Black Memory in Slavery’s Afterlives, Makshya Tolbert does a beautiful job of sharing the complexities of water in the history of slavery.[ii] From the slave ships of the past bringing Africans to our shores, to modern refugee boats sinking in the Mediterranean because no shores would welcome them, she highlights water’s impact on the lives of marginalized people. Water can be a barrier, a wall, a tomb. In a particularly poignant part of her essay, she reminds us of the different definitions of the word “wake”…the wake of a ship or boat showing others from where it had come,  or the watch or vigil after the death of a loved one. She lifts the idea of what she calls “wake work”: imagining new ways to live in the wake of slavery, in slavery’s afterlives, to survive (and more) the afterlife of being property…” We too can look back and learn from the impact of slavery and grieve the impact.

Another view into how enslaved people would have viewed water comes from the work of researcher Kevin Dawson, associate professor of history at the University of California, Merced who worked on a book on enslaved Africans and how their maritime traditions, including swimming, diving, surfing, boat-making, canoeing, and fishing, gave them freedom beyond many of the stereotypes.[1] Their expertise allowed them to capture seafood delicacies that were in demand by the white residents. Additionally, they were able to take goods to markets and sell to provide additional resources for themselves beyond the meager fare offered by many owners.

He writes about the impact, ”For instance, when white people from the American north and Europe sailed into slave-holding regions, many were surprised—even overwhelmed—by the degree to which life among enslaved Africans was steeped in maritime activity. Fleets of enslaved fishermen in African-style dugouts parted to make way for ships entering seaports, sailing past enslaved boys and girls swimming, as one observer described it, like “Tritons and Mermaids in the water.” Enslaved women in canoes paddled alongside ships to sell fresh produce, seafood, and tropical curiosities like parrots, alligators, and monkeys. Enslaved men in canoes, performing call-and-response songs in African and European languages, provided a steady cadence for paddling as they transported white newcomers ashore and loaded and off-loaded cargo.”[2] 

Water gave them a sense of freedom. Water gave them a level of autonomy. Water gave them much needed resources.

Water was also important in their hope of full freedom. Few passages have the impact on enslaved people than the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and lives of bondage. The cry of “Let my people go” carried into more modern times as more and more people were enslaved. Our spiritual for this morning lifts the power of the miracle of the waters parting and Moses leading the people to freedom.

See that band all dressed in red
God is gonna trouble these waters
Look like a band that Moses led
God is gonna trouble these waters.

These lyrics speak to the hope found in the faith of the slaves, that no matter how bad things look or how impossible it seems, that God is a God of rescue. God is a God of answered prayers. God is a God of miracles and freedom.

A parallel thought on the idea of walking through the water like in Exodus is that this song was historically used by the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman used it to encourage fleeing slaves to use waterways and not dense forests for safety and to cover the scent of the slaves from pursuing dogs. The water offered safety and escape.

As I shift to the John passage for a bit, I have to lift up Howard Thurman’s sermon linking this scripture with this spiritual.

I love how Thurman tells the story: “Always, patient friends placed him in the same spot beside the pool. For years longer than a fading memory could hold in focus, he had waited—this man with an incurable disease. His hope rose and fell like the ebb and flow of the ocean tide. He believed the legend, for he had seen it work its perfect work in the lives of many who had once been ill, but now were well. If somehow he could manage to be let down into the waters while they were being troubled, then he would be healed.”

Thurman then offered this interpretation of the text:

“For [the slaves] the ‘troubled waters’ meant the ups and downs, the vicissitudes of life. Within the context of the ‘troubled’ waters of life there are healing waters, because God is in the midst of the turmoil.”

God is in the midst of the turmoil. I am not saying God caused the turmoil, but we can be sure to know if we are in turmoil, that God is with us.

This John passage is often used as a weapon instead of a word of hope. I have heard it preached and I have taught it, as a challenge to the lack of motivation to this man. Why didn’t he just get into the water? Was he just whining and not really wanting to be healed? John could have used a well placed emoji so we would better know the tone of Jesus’s voice when he asks, “Do you want to be well?”

I mean did he say with an impatient or sarcastic tone, “Do you want to be well?”

Or did he say it with a helpful tone? “Do you want to be made well?”

Or was it with compassion and understanding? “Do you want to be made well?”

Looking at Jesus’s tone with so many others, and having a glimpse of his calling
“…to bring good news to the poor.
to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
   to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

Jesus saw the man, felt compassion and offered to heal him if he wanted.

Jesus didn’t do anything outwardly to heal the man…he didn’t help him to the water. He didn’t have his friends take him to the river to wash, Jesus just said,  “Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Just imagine that for a moment. The man had been coming there for 38 years. 38 years. Many of us have waited for a diagnosis, for test results, for a plan of treatment. Jesus sees us as we wait. Many of us have waited with an illness, with chronic pain, with mental illness. Jesus sees us as we wait.

In terms of our song today, the turmoil wasn’t only in the water, but the turmoil was in that man’s life. The turmoil was in Jesus’s healing of the man. The turmoil was in the man who had been paralyzed for 38 years being healed, taking up his mat and walking.

If you kept reading in John, you would see the turmoil in the man who had been paralyzed walking and doing the unlawful of carrying his mat on a Sabbath.

God is in the turmoil. God is with us in the waiting. God is with us in the diagnosis.

I almost used a painting of Van Gogh that we discussed last week in the Van Gogh and God class on the front of the bulletin. It was a painting of coal miners wives carrying big bags of coal. As we discussed this painting, those in the class lifted that Van Gogh saw these women. He saw the burdens they were carrying. He painted them with faces down with a sense of anonymity. But Van Gogh saw them. Van Gogh learned to see people—even the invisible people—even those on the margins. He felt called to not only paint the marginalized, but to live with and like the marginalized lived. Van Gogh kept painting the marginalized and wouldn’t paint what the rich wanted painted just because they didn’t want to be reminded of life on the margins. He gave up what could have been a very prosperous career to paint what he felt called to paint, and Van Gogh died in poverty, only selling one painting while alive.

What if we learned to see those around us? What if we learned to see those on the margins? What if we learned to see with compassion? What if we practiced doing that like Van Gogh practiced it with his painting? What if we practiced seeing people like Jesus seeing the man by the pool? What if we practiced seeing people like God saw the plight of the Hebrews as they were enslaved by the Egyptians?

I have this postcard on the front of the bulletin this week because of the baptism scene represented in it. When we are baptized it is an outward sign of God’s grace for us. It is God welcoming us into God’s family—God’s church. That is the beauty of us baptizing babies, as it is a visual reminder of the fact that we don’t do ANYTHING to be loved by God and welcomed by God. God invites us into the water. God invites us to wade in the waters.

Friends, let us answer the call to wade in the waters. Let us heed the reminder that God is in the turmoil. Do not shrink from moving confidently into the choppy seas. Wade into the waters because God is troubling the waters.

[1] https://huntington.org/verso/some-enslaved-africans-water-was-savior

[2] https://huntington.org/verso/some-enslaved-africans-water-was-savior

 

[i] https://reflections.yale.edu/article/between-babel-and-beatitude/bible-song-reclaiming-african-american-spirituals

[ii] https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/becoming-water/

 

 

 

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