-
Exodus 3:7–8 – “I have indeed seen the misery of my people... I have come down to rescue them.”
-
Luke 13:10–17 – Jesus heals the bent-over woman and confronts the hypocrisy of those who prefer rules over liberation.
There is a thread that runs from the impossible cruelty of Israelite slaves forced to make bricks in Egypt without straw as a binding agent, to an oppressive slave plantation in Maryland, to the kangaroo court trying Trayvon Martin, to the disrespectful treatment of the Ferguson and the #BlackLivesMatter protesters.
That thread is one of the circumstances that need God’s liberating attention. Where both God and some of God's faithful see troubles that many refuse to look at.
In Exodus 3:7–8, God tells Moses:
“I have seen... I have heard... I am concerned... So I have come down to rescue them.”
Harriet Tubman heard those same words from Exodus in her spirit. Her call didn't come from a burning bush, but from a burning conviction. God heard her people crying under the lash of American slavery. God was concerned. and Harriet answered God’s rescue mission. The response was not filled with plagues or thunder. She answered by becoming, in turns, a nurse, a Civil War spy, and, most famously, an Underground Railroad conductor. She, like others, followed quiet whispers in the night, secret songs, and the North Star.
She didn’t wait for any modern-day Pharaoh’s permission. Nor did she ask the oppressors to set the terms of freedom. Instead, she walked into Egypt herself and led her people out.
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery around 1822 in Maryland. Her birth name was Araminta Ross, and she later took her mother’s name, Harriet, after escaping slavery. As a child, she endured brutal treatment and hard labor. She suffered a traumatic head injury as a teenager when she was struck by a weight thrown by a slave overseer. This caused her lifelong seizures, visions, and intense dreams, which she understood as divine revelations. God used her just as she was. Her disability didn’t disqualify her from any liberation work. It may have deepened it.
In 1844, she married her husband, and in 1849, she fled to Philadelphia through the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was an organized group of free black men, whites, and Christian abolitionists who helped slaves escape the South.
She rescued her sister, her kids, and her two brothers. In 1851, she guided 11 fugitives north, earning her the name “Moses of her People”. Symbolically, the North became considered "The Promised Land". She was smart and figured out secret codes and paths to bring people safely to freedom. She lived in Canada because of the Fugitive Slave Act, but made trips twice a year to Maryland to save more slaves. She spoke out on behalf of slaves and women’s rights
In 1858, she assisted abolitionist John Brown in a raid on Harper’s Ferry. In the Civil War, she became a Union army scout, organizing a network of spies amongst Black men in the South. She was also a nurse and led an armed expedition to free more than 700 slaves. She never lost a life in her care.
After the war, she dedicated herself to building schools to educate freed men in South Carolina. She worked with Susan B. Anthony to support women’s suffrage in her later life, and in 1908, she established a home for older, impoverished African Americans in New York.
Many African American Spirituals included coded references to those fleeing the Underground Railroad disguised as worship. For example, the line in Wade in the Water “See that band all dressed in red” primarily draws on biblical imagery (a poetic image recalling the Red Sea). It is also known that people escaping slavery and Underground Railroad conductors layered spirituals with their double meanings. Red also alluded to sacrifice, the perilous journey to freedom, or served as a coded communication. These spirituals contained hidden messages, disguised as worship, to communicate powerful dual meanings.
To continue with today's readings, in Luke 13, Jesus encounters a woman who has been bent over for eighteen years, unable to stand upright. He interrupts the religious service to set her free. To others, she was invisible, a disruption, and a rule-breaker. Jesus sees her fully and calls her a daughter of Abraham. That’s revolutionary. He was saying, “She belongs to the covenant people. Her healing matters now, not after Sabbath. Now.”
So, what does this scripture mean for us today?
We see this same Spirit of liberation at work in many who are among us. For instance, there are the women who founded the Black Lives Matter movement: Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Cullors; three Black women, two of them queer, all of them prophets in our time. Like Harriet, they heard the cries. They saw a modern-day Egypt in our streets, in the systems, and in the silence of others' reactions to our metaphorical Egypt's indifference. Within that silence, they found a modern call, “We must move. We must speak. We must lead.”
They weren’t content to hope for slow progress or polite justice. After Trayvon Martin's death, they demanded a world where black bodies are not just mourned, but honored. Where black people aren’t only allowed to survive, but free to thrive. Where the bent are lifted and the bound are loosed.
Like Jesus and Harriet Tubman, these women, together with their movement, faced ridicule and dismissal. They were labeled disruptive, disrespectful, radical, and always asking for too much..We must realize that movements that put love into action and threaten a comfortable status quo will be labeled in this same way.
What they promote, however, poses urgent questions for us to answer: Do we align with the systems that prefer people stay bent over, stay bound, and stay unseen? Or will we follow the Spirit of Moses, of Jesus, of Harriet, of Opal, Alicia, and Patrisse? On this, the Gospel is clear: Liberation is not a side project. It is humankind's mission.
Unlike what the Pharisees thought, the Sabbath is not a reason to delay healing and justice; it is a reminder that the Sabbath is a perfect time for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment