7-21-2024 Citizens With The Saints & Ella's Song

Baptist Minister Vance Havner explained it well this way: You are not a citizen of this world trying to make your way to heaven…you are a citizen of heaven trying to make your way through this world.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes

Transcript

Since we were last together in the house of the Lord, just 7 days ago…we, part of the household of God, have made our way through all manner of things:

Perhaps, in your own lives, you received some sad news. Maybe you or someone you love lost a job, tested positive for Covid or worse, maybe you heard about misfortune visiting someone you love, or someone they love. Maybe you twisted an ankle, or wrung your hands in worry, or were caught in a plane that kept circling because the Microsoft crash left major airlines unable to communicate to navigation towers. All that happened this week.

Most certainly, we all tried to make our way through news coming out of The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. 

Maybe you tried to make your way through a crowd so tightly packed it was hard to move, or maybe you tried to make a way for your money to stretch farther than was possible and you felt the sting of having to wait for medications or other items that help you manage uncomfortable symptoms.

Maybe you heard or read about the ongoing disunity in our country, or you heard news about shameful hate crimes that simply will not die.

In our Gospel today we heard the phrase, “crossed over,” a phrase we sometimes use when we heard about someone dying.

I imagined a holy “crossing over” when I heard the news that Representative Sheila Jackson Lee from Texas had died of pancreatic cancer. Rep. Jackson Lee helped lead federal efforts to protect women from domestic violence. She helped recognize Juneteeth as a national holiday. That was her work. She had represented her Houston-based district and the nation’s fourth largest city since 1995. That’s a good-long run. She was a fierce advocate for women and minorities and a leader for House Democrats on many social justice issues from policing reform to reparations for descendants of enslaved people. She led the first rewrite of the Violence Against Women Act in nearly a decade, which now includes protections for Native American, transgender, and immigrant women. When I heard about Sheila Jackson Lee’s death, I immediately imagined John Lewis meeting  her at the gate.

And just four days later, we learned that Bernice Johnson Reagon, had also crossed over from this life to life everlasting. Reagon was a civil rights activist who co-founded The Freedom Singers and later started the African American vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock.  Reagon taught those who heard her voice that it is hard to separate liberation struggles from song. In the 1960s – at marches, and in jailhouses – the voice leading those songs was often Bernice Johnson Reagon. Her work as a scholar and activist continued throughout her life, in universities and concert halls, at protests and in houses of worship. The daughter of a Baptist minister, one of the things she often did to move songs from sanctuaries into the streets was to replace the word Jesus with Freedom, as in the hymn, Woke up this morning with my mind…stayed on Jesus. At protests, she would teach the crowds to sing, Woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on freedom. See? She believed that Jesus was invested in the cause of liberation. And so, in those situations, it was right and good, to drop in the word freedom as easily as we say, Jesus. Jesus longed for freedom for all God’s beloved children. Freedom from abuse. Freedom from poverty. Freedom from hunger and thirst. Freedom from tyranny, especially that imposed by the empire. The music of Bernice Johnson Reagon, along with her sisters in Sweet Honey in the Rock had a way of making a way for us to feel, in our very bones, that God was not separate from us, but in the very troubled waters in which we wade. The depth of their vocals coupled with the truth of the words they sung inspired and moved generations of people all trying to make their way through times of trouble by holding on to the hope made available through music.

In 1994, Reagon created a 26-part NPR documentary called Wade In the Water that won a Peabody Award. 

That documentary, Wade in the Water, was a listener’s guide to African American sacred music – one that celebrated the ways in which both worship and liberation are tied together.

Today’s reading from Ephesians reminds us that we are Citizens with the Saints. Baptist Minister Vance Havner explained it well this way: You are not a citizen of this world trying to make your way to heaven…you are a citizen of heaven trying to make your way through this world.

I’m gonna say that again cause I know you’re gonna wanna tell somebody about it later: You are not a citizen of this world trying to make your way to heaven…you are a citizen of heaven trying to make your way through this world. Doesn’t that change the way we hear this just a little. The way all of this, all the things that I named.

That is important to remember because making our way in this world right now is not easy. It was not easy for Shirley Jackson Lee. It was not easy for Bernice Johnson Reagon. And it is not easy for anyone gathered here this morning. It is a challenging time to be citizens with the saints trying to make our way through the world until God calls us home. 

And so it is important for us to look to the lives of others who have walked this road with us and remember how they incorporated their faith into their life’s work, and how that very faith gave them the strength to stand with those being persecuted and stand against the powers in this world that would harm our brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Project 2025 is a Presidential Transition Project written by The Heritage Foundation. If you are not aware of it, I urge you to look into it this week. Project 2025 details how to remake the federal government to carry out an extremist far-right agenda. It includes taking away protections for our environment, for women, for black and brown people, for immigrants and for children. The items in this plan are disturbing and include taking away the very freedoms that people including Sheila Jackson Lee and Bernice John Reagon worked, tirelessly, to enact.

So the question for us today is how do we hold onto hope? How do we find our way in this world during a time of such turmoil and threats? And the answer, I believe, lies in the Word of God, for which you have gathered today, coupled with the example of people of faith who found their way through equally troubling times, and who now are home, at last, enjoying their full citizenship with the saints, in a place where those who were once far off have come near and a place where no passport is required and no one is illegal. 

I suggest, as we prepared to make our way through another week of ups and downs, twists and turns, things that will amaze us and things that will horrify us,

I suggest we remember that we are already Citizens with the Saints according to the words of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And as Citizens, we work on behalf of our brothers and sisters who are most vulnerable to the threats posed by Project 2025.

As Citizens with the Saints, we pray that God’s will be done. We pray protection for those whose lives are being threatened because of the hatred of others.. We gather together as people of faith and encourage one another. 

As Citizens with the Saints, we do not allow despair to have the last word. We make our way through this world, aware of its brokenness, and also noticing where healing is taking place for everyone who so much as touched the fringe of his garment. We see corruption, yes, and we look toward righteousness. We sing the songs that remind us of God’s promises and God’s presence. We let music set us free to remember what it feels like to be together, the Citizens with the Saints, moving to the same rhythm, singing God’s work into creation, understanding that we are only here to visit, and to do what we can, with what we have, where we are, leading, always, with love.

One of the songs gifted to us by Bernice Johnson Reagon is called Ella’s Song. You have the lyrics in your bulletin. If you don’t you might want to cuddle up with someone who does. As a way of expressing gratitude for her life and the life of Sheila Jackson Lee, I invite you to listen to it now, together. And I invite you to join in as the Spirit moves you, so that together we might bask in music that God brought to this world, through a woman and her musical group. Why?  To help us make our way through a time such as this.

Ella's Song

Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon
 Sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock

We who believe in freedom cannot rest
 We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes

Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons
 Is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers' sons

That which touches me most is that I had a chance to work with people
 Passing on to others that which was passed on to me

To me young people come first, they have the courage where we fail
 And if I can but shed some light as they carry us through the gale

The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on
 Is when the reins are in the hands of the young, who dare to run against the storm

Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine on me
 I need to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny

Struggling myself don't mean a whole lot, I've come to realize
 That teaching others to stand up and fight is the only way my struggle survives

I'm a woman who speaks in a voice and I must be heard
 At times I can be quite difficult, I'll bow to no man's word

We who believe in freedom cannot rest
 We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes