Music by the Laurie Altman Trio
Readings by Cynthia Jarvis and Mark Conti
EXODUS 3:7-12
Then the Lord said, I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharoah to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, Who am I that I should go to Pharoah, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? He said, I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.
* * * ADJURATION ................................... (Charles Enoch Wheeler)
Let the knowing speak,
Let the oppressed tell of their sorrows,
Of their salt and boundless grief,
Since even the wise and the brave
Must wonder, and the creeping mists
Of doubt, creep along the trough
Of pursuing woe. . .
To curl among the crevices
of the most cannily armored brain.
Let those who can endure their doubts
Speak for the comfort of the weary
Who weep to know.
DEUTERONOMY 15:12-15
If a member of your community, whether a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and works for you six years, in the seventh year you shall set that person free. And when you send a male slave out from you a free person, you shall not send him out empty-handed. Provide liberally out of your flock, your threshing floor, and your wine press, thus giving to him some of the bounty with which the Lord your God has blessed you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; for this reason I lay this command upon you today.
* * * SYMPATHY ........................................ (Paul Laurence Dunbar)I now what the caged bird feels, alas !
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals -
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is read on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting -
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, -
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings -
I know why the caged bird sings!
JOB 40:1-14
And the Lord said to Job:
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?
Anyone who argues with God must respond.
Then Job answered the Lord:
See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my mouth.
I have spoken once, and I will not answer;
twice, but will proceed no further.
Gird up your loins like a man;
I will question you, and you declare to me.
Will you even put me in the wrong?
Will you condemn me that you may be justified?
Have you an arm like God
and can you thunder with a voice like his?
Deck yourself with majesty and dignity;
clothe yourself with glory and splendor.
Pour out the overflowings of your anger,
and look on all who are proud, and abase them.
Look on all who are proud, and bring them low;
tread down the wicked where they stand.
Hide them all in the dust together;
bind their faces in the world below.
Then I will also acknowledge to you
that your own right hand can give you victory.
* * * THE PREACHER RUMINATES BEHIND THE SERMON .................. (Gwendolyn Brooks)
I think it must be lonely to be God.
Nobody loves a master. No. Despite
The bright hosannas, bright dear-Lords, and bright
Determined reverence of Sunday eyes.
Picture Jehovah striding through the hall
Of His importance, creatures running out
From servant-corners to acclaim, to shout
Appreciation of His merit’s glare.
But who walks with Him? -- dares to take His arm,
To slap Him on the shoulder, tweak his ear,
Buy Him a Coca-Cola or a beer,
Pooh-pooh his politics, call Him a fool?
Perhaps who knows? -- He tires of looking down.
Those eyes are never lifted. Never straight.
perhaps sometimes He tires of being great
In solitude. Without a hand to hold.PSALM 137
By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs,and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion! How could we sing the Lord’s songin a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouthif I do not remember you, If I do not set Jerusalemabove my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomitesthe day of Jerusalem’s fallhow they said, Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations! O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you backwhat you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little onesand dash them against the rock!
* * * BLACK WOMAN ................................................... (Georgia Douglas Johnson)
Don’t knock at my door, little child,
I cannot let you in,
You know not what a world this is
Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
Until I come to you,
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
I cannot let you in !
Don’t knock at my door, little one,
I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf-ear to your call
Time and time again !
You do not know the monster men
Inhabiting the earth,
Be still, be still, my precious child,
I must not give you birth !
JEREMIAH 42:18-22
For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Just as my anger and my wrath were poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so my wrath will be poured out on you when you go to Egypt. You shall become an object of execration and horror, of cursing and ridicule. You shall see this place no more. The Lord has said to you, O remnant of Judah, Do not go to Egypt. Be well aware that I have warned you today that you have made a fatal mistake. For you yourselves sent me to the Lord your God, saying, Pray for us to the Lord our God, and whatever the Lord our God says, tell us and we will do it. So I have told you today, but you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord your God in anything that he sent me to tell you. Be well aware, then, that you shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence in the place where you desire to go and settle.
* * * PRAYER .............................................. (Langston Hughes)
I ask you this:
Which way to go?
I ask you this:
Which sin to bear?
Which crown to put
Upon my hair?
I do not know,
Lord God,
I do not know.
JOHN 8:34-38
Jesus answered them, Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word. I declare what I have seen in the Father’s presence; as for you, you should do what you have heard from the Father.
* * * LEGACY .............................................. (Dudley Randall)
What desperate nightmare rapts me to this land
Lit by a bloody moon, red on the hills,
Red in the valleys? Why am I compelled
To tread again where buried feet have trod,
To shed my tears where blood and tears have flowed?
Compulsion of the blood and of the moon
Transports me. I was molded from this clay.
My blood must ransom all the blood shed here,
My tears redeem the tears. Cripples and monsters
Are here. My flesh must make them whole and hale.
I am the sacrifice.
GALATIONS 3:23-29
Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
* * * FREDERICK DOUGLAS ....................................... (Robert Hayden)
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
Usable as earth; when it belongs at last to our children,
When it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action: when it is finally won, when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians;
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
II CORINTHIANS 3:12-18
Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
* * * DARK TESTAMENT ............................................ (Pauli Murray)
Hope is a crushed stalk
Between clenched fingers.
Hope is a bird’s wing
Broken by a stone.
Hope is a word in a tuneless ditty
A word whispered with the wind,
A dream of forty acres and a mule,
A cabin of one’s own and rest days often,
A name and place for one’s children
And children’s children at last . . .
Hope is a song in a weary throat.
O give me a song of hope
And a world where I can sing it.
Give me a song of faith
And a people to believe in it.
Give me a song of kindliness
And a country where I can live it.
O give me a song of hope and love
And a brown girl’s heart to hear it.Tear it out of the history books!
Bury it in conspiracies of silence!
Fight many wars to suppress it!
But it is written in our faces
Twenty million times over!
It sings in our blood
It cries from the housetops,
It mourns with the wind in the forests,
When dogs howl and will not be comforted,
When newborn lambs bleat in the snowdrifts,
And dead leaves rattle in the graveyards.
And we’ll shout it from the mountains,
We’ll tell it in the valleys,
We’ll talk it in miner’s shack,
We’ll sing it at the work bench,
We’ll whisper it over back fences.
We’ll speak it in the kitchen,
We’ll state it at the White House,
We’ll tell it everywhere to all who will listen
We will lay siege, let thunder serve our claim,
For it must be told, endlessly told, and you must hear it.
Listen white brothers, hear the dirge of history,
And hold out your hand Hold out your hand.Of us who darkly stand
Bared to the spittle of every curse,
Nor left the dignity of beasts,
let none say,