James W. Johnson
Exodus 3:16-20
Go and assemble the elders of Israel, and say to them, “The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying: I have given heed to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt. I declare that I will bring you up out of the misery of Egypt, to a land flowing with milk and honey.” They will listen to your voice; and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; let us now go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, so that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.” I know, however, that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. I will stretch out my hand and strike Pharaoh with my wonders…and he will let you go.
Lift Every Voice and Sing LBW 562
1 Lift ev'ry voice and sing till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty.
Let our rejoicing rise high as the list'ning skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us;
sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on till victory is won.
2 Stony the road we trod, bitter the chast'ning rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet come to the place for which our parents sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered;
we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
3 God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
thou who hast by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray.
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;
shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand, true to our God, true to our native land.
Text: James W. Johnson, 1871-1938
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the newly formed NAACP asked James Weldon Johnson, a noted African American poet, to write a hymn in honor of the day. The result was, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” which has become known as the “black national anthem”.
Now before you get your nose all out of joint over the political implications of this historical fact, just take a breath and listen.
When it was written the Jim Crow Laws were at their height. When it was written, communities all across the South, were erecting statues to Confederate notables, like Nathan Bedford Forrest who founded the KKK – a group that became a scourge to southern, black citizens.
When it was written, this country was in the midst of fighting the First World War; sending millions of its young men, both black and white, to fight for democracy in the muddy killing fields of Europe, and dying by the thousands at the hands of the soldiers of the Central Powers, and from a strange new disease called “the Spanish Flu” – which would kill more in the next year than all the bullets of WWI did in the previous four. This was all true…and Johnson knew it all too well.
So when he wrote the hymn it was not only the long, protracted struggle for freedom that the black race had endured he had in mind, but also the long, protracted struggle for liberty people of faith had endured. He was a patriotic American and a person of faith. Verse 2 tells both the story of slaves brought here in chains and freed through the efforts of people like Lincoln and also the story of the Children of Israel; their 40 years of wandering through the wilderness, and their final, ultimate delivery to the Promised Land. Johnson saw all of us as people on a journey. A journey from where we are, to where God intended us to be. And by this measure, this hymn tells the story of us all, black and white, and encourages us to stay “true to our God, and true to our native land!”
Prayer: Lord of the journey, be with us as we go. Let us never look back to where we were, but always forward to where you are leading. But also, Lord, give us the courage to look from side to side, and see the ones who walk with us. For they are our brothers and sisters; we are your people! Amen.