There’s a particular holiness to spirituals. Simple phrases and repeated words contain multitudes. Bible stories provided cover for everything that slaves needed to say, but couldn’t say safely. “Wade in the Water” reminds us again and again that “God’s a-gonna trouble the water.” It calls us back to that story in the Gospel of John. A man who was ill wanted to be healed so he spent his days by a certain pool in Jerusalem. From time to time, angels would come down from heaven and “trouble the water” (stir it up). Whoever got in the water first would be healed. The man had no one to help him into the pool. He stayed near the water because he had hope, but he had no idea how healing could happen for him. Jesus cured him on the spot. “God’s gonna trouble the water” – God’s going to act, do something new. You don’t know when it will happen, but hold on to that hope. “God’s gonna trouble the water.”
And more: the verses tell us about the Israelites, “the band that Moses led” going through the water. Now we stand at the Red Sea, watching it part before our eyes. Slaves learned about the Exodus from Egypt. Some of them had to learn the story in secret because there was a slave Bible that didn’t include that story at all. All they got from Exodus was the Ten Commandments. In whispers of faith, they told one another about the Hebrew people who were enslaved. Then God moved heaven and earth to deliver them to freedom. “Wade in the water” – run away, escape slavery. God wants people to be free.
Deeper and deeper, we hear references to Jordan’s stream. The last thing the Israelites did before arriving in the Promised Land was to cross the Jordan River. “Wade in the water” – a land of liberty is just there; your heavenly home awaits and no violent slave-holder has power to take that away. These are the waters that are unconquerable: the waters of Baptism, of healing, of God’s miraculous intervention, of life in heaven.
Every spiritual we sing is sacred ground because, word by word, we hear echoes of peoples’ sorrow clinging to the promises of God, of hope persisting through pain. We feel the voices of those who were silenced, resounding in our souls. The music captures these holy moments and calls to us to stay with them and to be changed by them.
So many slaves clung to real Christian hope. They rejected the twisted version of Christianity that slave-holders had taught them: that they were less than whites; that they would never enter the Kingdom of God unless they obeyed. Living and dying in Christ, they were able to behold his face more clearly. They created a legacy that survived brutal oppression and continues to reveal Jesus’s holy face.
References:
-Daw, Carl P., Jr. Glory to God: A Companion. (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville), 2016, p. 784.
–https://artandtheology.org/2020/09/07/wade-in-the-water-artful-devotion/
–https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101058495415&seq=5
–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Low,_Sweet_Chariot
–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_in_the_Water
–https://hammer.purdue.edu/articles/thesis/AFRICAN_AMERICAN_SPIRITUALS_AND_THE_BIBLE_SELECTING_TEXTS_FOR_SECONDARY_EDUCATION_INSTRUCTION/13331414?file=25681157
–https://www.jordanantiquarianbooks.com/item/for-the-oral-teaching-of-colored-persons-a-slaveholders-catechism/
–https://www.neilchanmusic.com/post/the-depths-of-swing-low-sweet-chariot-faith-freedom-and-resilience
–https://oll.libertyfund.org/publications/reading-room/Ealy_Slave_Bible
–https://openscholar.uga.edu/record/3944/files/neal_amber_m_202205_phd.pdf
–https://rootedministry.com/wade-in-the-water-and-our-great-deliver-black-spirituals-for-youth-ministry/
–https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/history-of-hymns-swing-low-sweet-chariot
–https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/history-of-hymns-we-shall-walk-through-the-valley-in-peace
–https://wordandworld.luthersem.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/25-3_Apocalypse_Then_And_Now/The%20Revelation%20to%20John;%20Lessons%20from%20the%20History%20of%20the%20Book’s%20Reception.pdf
–https://writingonmusic.com/2021/08/06/deep-waters-wade-in-the-water/
