Richard Kuns

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

--Preamble of the Declaration of Independence

 
Dear friends,

More than two millennia before the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence was written, another voice spoke in the desert of Sinai to a people preparing to enter a land of “milk and honey” and freedom from the tyranny of Egypt. It was a call to remember and to listen.
 
For the Lord your God, He is the God of gods and the Master of masters, the great and mighty and fearsome God Who shows no favor and takes no bribe, doing justice for orphan and widow and loving the sojourner to give him bread and cloak.  And you shall love the sojourner, for sojourners you were in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:17-20, Robert Alter)
 
Today is July 4th and we would typically join with neighbors and family for a cookout, tap our toes to John Philip Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever, sing The Star-Spangled Banner and watch colorful fireworks burst over our heads.  All in celebration of our freedoms as Americans.  And yet as we celebrate there is a voice rising that must be heard.  It is the voice of those still “bound” in the land of the free.
 
On the eve of the Civil War (1860), Walt Whitman wrote I Hear America Singing:
“I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear… Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else… Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.”
 
Whitman speaks of hearing the mechanic, the carpenter, the mason, the boatman, the shoemaker, the woodcutter, mothers and young wives. But not one word of hearing the songs of the slave in the field or preparing food in steaming kitchens, even as America was preparing to fight the bloodiest war in our history over the fate of the slave. When published in 1867 in Leaves of Grass, the poem is still deaf to the sounds of the slave spirituals or blues.
 
James H. Cone notes in his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree, the end of the Civil War may have “freed” the slave, but it did not end the desire to define and legislate America as a white nation. (“Nobody Knows de Trouble I See,” pp 1-29). The voices rise in the haunting tones of the blues and spirituals.
 
Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile/ sometimes I feel like a motherless chile/Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile/A long ways from home.
Nobody knows the trouble I see/nobody knows but Jesus/ nobody knows the trouble I see/ Glory Hallelujah!
 
As I hear the words of those spirituals, voices rising from the pits of despair, I am reminded of  Psalm 137:1-2: By the rivers of Babylon/there we sat down/ and there we wept/ when we remembered Zion. (Pamela Greenberg translation; this psalm is designated for reading today in the Daily Office). The psalm ends with words of anger and frustration which most of us find disturbing and refuse to read--a plea for God to defend them and take action against their oppressors.
 
Let us Pause our celebration and Pray:
 
Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP 258)
 
Shalom, Richard Kuns