The Truth's Bell

Our church has a modest bell in its steeple.  Much smaller than the Morgan County Courthouse bell that is my constant companion in the rectory.  Still it rings with sufficient charm on those occasions like weddings and Easter and with some solemnity when we are laying a loved one to rest.  We're inconsistent in our practice but that is not the bell's fault.

On this past Sunday a small group of parishioners and friends gathered to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of slaves in Jamestown, Virginia.  I had cobbled together a liturgy of prayers and a pledge to action centered around a hymn whose words could be sung to a tune we had just used earlier in worship that morning.

We took turns and while the rest of us said our prayers and sang this hymn we pulled that stiff little rope to ring the bell at least 400 times:

Let press, let pulpit thunder
In all slave−holders’ ears
Till they disgorge the plunder
They’ve garnered up for years;
Till Mississippi’s valley,
Till Carolina’s coast,
Round Freedom’s standard rally,
A vast, a ransomed host!*

Important to several of us including some who were not attending is the accuracy of the claims about slavery's beginnings in "America."  My heart is settled that our claim of a 400 year history is damning enough such that other beginnings or practices in other settlements, that other competing histories or claims only reinforce the judgement.  Slavery should never have been, period.

That it gets the mention it does from the great missionary Paul as a standard of society and culture out-gained indeed undone by the saving act of Christ Jesus is indication enough that it has gone on too long.  Our 400 or whatever number of years it "really" is observance is more modest than our bell.

The truth is that humans can and have been horribly sinful and have from the beginning found ways to subject one class below another.

The number of years in our commemoration do not just speak of a shameful past.  They speak just as loudly -- the truth's bell is ringing -- to turn our attention to our current sins against each other.

Part of our liturgy was edited from prayers for those children enslaved in a sex trade actively practiced right here in Georgia, most likely even Morgan County.  Part of our liturgy named the horrible remainders of Jim Crow still infecting our right to vote.  Part of our liturgy begged for us to make a difference now.

So the truth is not so much undone by competing histories.  All of them are damning!  But our bell can also ring for more than commemorations.  It can and should ring to say to God "save us!"  It can and should ring to proclaim God's power over our histories, over our divisions, over our sins past and present.  The truth's bell is ringing and like Paul it is proclaiming:

. . . 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. (Galatians 3:26-28 NRSV)

*John Pierpont (April 6, 1785 – August 27, 1866) was an American poet, who was also successively a teacher, lawyer, merchant, and Unitarian minister. His most famous poem is The Airs of Palestine.