Not Forsaken
Illustration
Stories
Contents
“Not Forsaken” by John Sumwalt
“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Frank Ramirez
Not Forsaken
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 22
In you our ancestors trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved;
in you they trusted, and were not put to shame. vv. 4-5
Two friends, from what Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation,” tested positive for Covid-19 recently. They both live in nursing homes. One was a favorite Sunday School teacher at my home church.
As I have been praying for them, I have wondered how many more from that World War II generation are in danger from or have died from Covid. And I have wondered if this generation, which is suffering the consequences of so much Covid denial today, would have done better than us in their prime. What could they teach us about coping with food lines, unemployment, the loss of businesses and homes, and rationing?
There was rationing throughout World War II. “Every American was issued a series of ration books. The books contained removable stamps good for certain rationed items, like sugar, meat, cooking oil, and canned goods. Once a person's ration stamps were used up for a month, she couldn't buy any more of that type of food. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) issued the stamps which also dealt with gasoline, steel, aluminum, and electricity shortages…Scarce medicines such as penicillin were rationed by triage officers in the US military. Civilian hospitals received only small amounts of penicillin. A triage panel at each hospital decided which patients would receive the penicillin.”
A patriotic spirit pervaded most Americans, but there was also resistance to the call to sacrifice. “In some regions breaking the gas rationing was so prevalent that night courts were set up to supplement the number of violators caught… .” There was also a black market in stamps. To prevent this, the OPA ordered vendors not to accept stamps that they themselves did not tear out of books.”
I wish I could ask someone who remembers that time if the resistance to rationing and other sacrifices was as fierce as the resistance to masking and social distancing is today. An El Paso–based nurse, Ashley Bartholomew, recently tweeted that when she checked in on a patient who was ‘awake and alert,’ the news was on, “El Paso in the national headlines again for needing more freezer truck morgues.… He mentions hating ‘fake news’. He says, ‘I don’t think Covid is really more than a flu.’”
The nurse added: “… I’m at a loss for words. Here I am, basically wrapped in a tarp: here he is in a Covid ICU. How can you deny the validity of Covid? …Misinformation is literally killing people.” Gigi Perez, a California–based nurse who is actively treating Covid-19 patients, said, “The COVID-19 unit I work in has already lost seven nurses in the last three months due to the burnout from managing these types of patients. Workers are “beginning to resent the public for not doing their part to help control the pandemic,” she said.
Fierce resistance to harsh reality is not something new to humankind. After being freed from slavery in Egypt, the Hebrews gave in to their fears again and again on the way to the promised land. The prophet Nehemiah said, “They refused to listen and failed to remember the wonders you performed among them. They stiffened their necks and appointed a leader to return them to their bondage. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in loving devotion, and You did not forsake them.”
Hold on to Nehemiah’s reminder that God does not forsake us, even when we stiffen our necks and refuse to wear a mask.
* * *
Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground
by Frank Ramirez
John 18:1--19:42
Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. (vv. 42-43)
The bitter story of Good Friday, which includes cowardice, betrayal, denial, sham justice, humiliation, torture, brutality, and an agonizing execution. The story begins with the added cruelty that Jesus alone knows what is coming, and that this solitude added to his agony. It ends with the body of Jesus laid in a borrowed tomb.
Good Friday is memorialized in many songs, but one of those, the hymn “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” is winging its way through the cold and dark of interstellar space as an emissary of humanity, in part because this is part of our shared human experience.
Dark was the night, and cold the ground
On which our Lord was laid….
This hymn, published in 1792 and written by Thomas Haweis (1734-1820) encapsulates the whole story, from the agony in the garden to the burial of Jesus. But the version that wings its way to the stars was recorded on December 3, 1927, by blues guitarist and Black minister Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945). Johnson, a distinctive vocalist, did not sing the lyrics on his gospel blues version, instead moaning from a deep well of emotion, calling to mind the “sighs too deep for words” spoken of by the Apostle Paul, and reflecting both the crucifixion and the plight of blacks in Jim Crow America.
Though the so-called Roaring Twenties are remembered as a time of elegant swells and audacious flappers, the 1920’s were mostly a tough time for everyone else. Whether you worked on the farm or labored in the cities, it was a hardscrabble existence for all but the rich. There was no protection for laborers, and no understanding of how PTSDs were crippling those who had witnessed the carnage of the First World War.
And even if you were getting ahead, just a little, from our perspective a century later we know that looming just beyond the horizon was the unimaginable Great Depression, that would plunge the entire country, including the middle class, into poverty and misery.
Whatever else could be said, it was ten times worse for African Americans. Though slavery had been abolished with the Civil War, the constitutional protections seemingly put in place by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were thrown out the window. In many states, no black person had voted for decades. Blacks were confined to menial labor, substandard housing, no access to justice, separated Christian churches, and unrelenting hatred. With few exceptions, the United States was segregated.
During the late twenties, enterprising record companies were sending out representatives to set up temporary recording studios to capture the authentic sound of musicians, songwriters, and singers outside the mainstream. These included engineers specifically targeting black performers, producing what were then called “race records.”
Among these was a minister, guitarist, songwriter, and singer known as Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945). Johnson was born in a small town in Texas with vision disabilities, but he was not fully blind until his stepmother tossed lye in his face when he was seven years old because he tried to shame her adulterous behavior. Or was it because he looked at a partial solar eclipse in 1905, or did he ruin his eyesight because he wore a bad set of glasses because the family was so poor?
Or was it a combination of all three? His was a tumultuous life, and its often hard to separate legend from fact in his biography. It’s said he learned to play on a cigar box guitar when he was five. His was a unique sound, with his gravel deep voice and hard-headed gospel lyrics. It is said he had no bottleneck, so he used a penknife to create the voice-like melodies of his slide guitar technique.
Thanks to his upbringing in the local black Baptist Church, Johnson longed to take up the ministry, which he did in due time. On several occasions during the late twenties Johnson, along with other Black musicians, showed up at recording sessions in which their music was preserved. Typically, they were paid fifty dollars, a large sum of cash in those days, but had no control over their songs and no royalties and future earnings.
His first record, “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole” backed with “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed” (which was later covered by Bob Dylan on his first album) was released by Columbia records and sold well, leading to several other releases, until the Great Depression struck, which meant an end to any hope of earning those precious dollars.
Songs like “John the Revelator” retold scriptures to inspire repentance and change. “Ain’t Nobody’s Fault But My Own” called on sinners to open their Bibles, making it clear the good news of Jesus Christ is there for all to respond to. “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning,” as well as “By and By Going to See the King” reminded believers always to be ready for the return of Jesus.
That is especially emphasized in “Jesus Is Coming Soon,” a song about the 1918 Pandemic, reminding believers God speaks to us in terrible suffering and that the wise will keep their hearts open to the gospel.
Johnson’s was a constant struggle. He lived in dire poverty, struggling to survive, playing music on the streets of Dallas for the spare change thrown to him.
His death was as tragic as his life. His house burned down in 1945 and he had nowhere to go. According to his wife Angelina they lay on the wet bed that night on layers of newspapers to protect them from the damp and chill. Johnson caught pneumonia, then was turned away from the hospital, which refused to admit him, so he died in the ruins of his home.
His gospel songs would go on to inspire many of the great lights of modern rock and roll, from Led Zeppelin to Peter, Paul, and Mary, and others in between. His appearance on the seminal collection “Anthology of American Folks Music,” led in part to the resurrection of his music.
In 1977 his recording of “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” was one of only 27 songs included on the “Golden Record” sent with the Voyager spacecraft into the depths of interstellar space as representative of the best of the world’s music. According to Timothy Ferris, charged by NASA with selecting the music, "Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight."
While our hope is in the resurrection on Easter morning, our plight is with Jesus in his time of dying. Recalling that darkness in his wordless moans, Blind Willie Johnson continues to proclaim that through Jesus we conquer all.
(Want to know more? Blind Willie Johnson’s recordings are available on the internet. Liner notes to various compilations record the few facts known about him. The Timothy Ferris quote is found in “Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record,” Random House, 1978, pp 177-178.)
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 2, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Not Forsaken” by John Sumwalt
“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Frank Ramirez
Not Forsaken
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 22
In you our ancestors trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved;
in you they trusted, and were not put to shame. vv. 4-5
Two friends, from what Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation,” tested positive for Covid-19 recently. They both live in nursing homes. One was a favorite Sunday School teacher at my home church.
As I have been praying for them, I have wondered how many more from that World War II generation are in danger from or have died from Covid. And I have wondered if this generation, which is suffering the consequences of so much Covid denial today, would have done better than us in their prime. What could they teach us about coping with food lines, unemployment, the loss of businesses and homes, and rationing?
There was rationing throughout World War II. “Every American was issued a series of ration books. The books contained removable stamps good for certain rationed items, like sugar, meat, cooking oil, and canned goods. Once a person's ration stamps were used up for a month, she couldn't buy any more of that type of food. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) issued the stamps which also dealt with gasoline, steel, aluminum, and electricity shortages…Scarce medicines such as penicillin were rationed by triage officers in the US military. Civilian hospitals received only small amounts of penicillin. A triage panel at each hospital decided which patients would receive the penicillin.”
A patriotic spirit pervaded most Americans, but there was also resistance to the call to sacrifice. “In some regions breaking the gas rationing was so prevalent that night courts were set up to supplement the number of violators caught… .” There was also a black market in stamps. To prevent this, the OPA ordered vendors not to accept stamps that they themselves did not tear out of books.”
I wish I could ask someone who remembers that time if the resistance to rationing and other sacrifices was as fierce as the resistance to masking and social distancing is today. An El Paso–based nurse, Ashley Bartholomew, recently tweeted that when she checked in on a patient who was ‘awake and alert,’ the news was on, “El Paso in the national headlines again for needing more freezer truck morgues.… He mentions hating ‘fake news’. He says, ‘I don’t think Covid is really more than a flu.’”
The nurse added: “… I’m at a loss for words. Here I am, basically wrapped in a tarp: here he is in a Covid ICU. How can you deny the validity of Covid? …Misinformation is literally killing people.” Gigi Perez, a California–based nurse who is actively treating Covid-19 patients, said, “The COVID-19 unit I work in has already lost seven nurses in the last three months due to the burnout from managing these types of patients. Workers are “beginning to resent the public for not doing their part to help control the pandemic,” she said.
Fierce resistance to harsh reality is not something new to humankind. After being freed from slavery in Egypt, the Hebrews gave in to their fears again and again on the way to the promised land. The prophet Nehemiah said, “They refused to listen and failed to remember the wonders you performed among them. They stiffened their necks and appointed a leader to return them to their bondage. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in loving devotion, and You did not forsake them.”
Hold on to Nehemiah’s reminder that God does not forsake us, even when we stiffen our necks and refuse to wear a mask.
* * *
Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground
by Frank Ramirez
John 18:1--19:42
Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. (vv. 42-43)
The bitter story of Good Friday, which includes cowardice, betrayal, denial, sham justice, humiliation, torture, brutality, and an agonizing execution. The story begins with the added cruelty that Jesus alone knows what is coming, and that this solitude added to his agony. It ends with the body of Jesus laid in a borrowed tomb.
Good Friday is memorialized in many songs, but one of those, the hymn “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” is winging its way through the cold and dark of interstellar space as an emissary of humanity, in part because this is part of our shared human experience.
Dark was the night, and cold the ground
On which our Lord was laid….
This hymn, published in 1792 and written by Thomas Haweis (1734-1820) encapsulates the whole story, from the agony in the garden to the burial of Jesus. But the version that wings its way to the stars was recorded on December 3, 1927, by blues guitarist and Black minister Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945). Johnson, a distinctive vocalist, did not sing the lyrics on his gospel blues version, instead moaning from a deep well of emotion, calling to mind the “sighs too deep for words” spoken of by the Apostle Paul, and reflecting both the crucifixion and the plight of blacks in Jim Crow America.
Though the so-called Roaring Twenties are remembered as a time of elegant swells and audacious flappers, the 1920’s were mostly a tough time for everyone else. Whether you worked on the farm or labored in the cities, it was a hardscrabble existence for all but the rich. There was no protection for laborers, and no understanding of how PTSDs were crippling those who had witnessed the carnage of the First World War.
And even if you were getting ahead, just a little, from our perspective a century later we know that looming just beyond the horizon was the unimaginable Great Depression, that would plunge the entire country, including the middle class, into poverty and misery.
Whatever else could be said, it was ten times worse for African Americans. Though slavery had been abolished with the Civil War, the constitutional protections seemingly put in place by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were thrown out the window. In many states, no black person had voted for decades. Blacks were confined to menial labor, substandard housing, no access to justice, separated Christian churches, and unrelenting hatred. With few exceptions, the United States was segregated.
During the late twenties, enterprising record companies were sending out representatives to set up temporary recording studios to capture the authentic sound of musicians, songwriters, and singers outside the mainstream. These included engineers specifically targeting black performers, producing what were then called “race records.”
Among these was a minister, guitarist, songwriter, and singer known as Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945). Johnson was born in a small town in Texas with vision disabilities, but he was not fully blind until his stepmother tossed lye in his face when he was seven years old because he tried to shame her adulterous behavior. Or was it because he looked at a partial solar eclipse in 1905, or did he ruin his eyesight because he wore a bad set of glasses because the family was so poor?
Or was it a combination of all three? His was a tumultuous life, and its often hard to separate legend from fact in his biography. It’s said he learned to play on a cigar box guitar when he was five. His was a unique sound, with his gravel deep voice and hard-headed gospel lyrics. It is said he had no bottleneck, so he used a penknife to create the voice-like melodies of his slide guitar technique.
Thanks to his upbringing in the local black Baptist Church, Johnson longed to take up the ministry, which he did in due time. On several occasions during the late twenties Johnson, along with other Black musicians, showed up at recording sessions in which their music was preserved. Typically, they were paid fifty dollars, a large sum of cash in those days, but had no control over their songs and no royalties and future earnings.
His first record, “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole” backed with “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed” (which was later covered by Bob Dylan on his first album) was released by Columbia records and sold well, leading to several other releases, until the Great Depression struck, which meant an end to any hope of earning those precious dollars.
Songs like “John the Revelator” retold scriptures to inspire repentance and change. “Ain’t Nobody’s Fault But My Own” called on sinners to open their Bibles, making it clear the good news of Jesus Christ is there for all to respond to. “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning,” as well as “By and By Going to See the King” reminded believers always to be ready for the return of Jesus.
That is especially emphasized in “Jesus Is Coming Soon,” a song about the 1918 Pandemic, reminding believers God speaks to us in terrible suffering and that the wise will keep their hearts open to the gospel.
Johnson’s was a constant struggle. He lived in dire poverty, struggling to survive, playing music on the streets of Dallas for the spare change thrown to him.
His death was as tragic as his life. His house burned down in 1945 and he had nowhere to go. According to his wife Angelina they lay on the wet bed that night on layers of newspapers to protect them from the damp and chill. Johnson caught pneumonia, then was turned away from the hospital, which refused to admit him, so he died in the ruins of his home.
His gospel songs would go on to inspire many of the great lights of modern rock and roll, from Led Zeppelin to Peter, Paul, and Mary, and others in between. His appearance on the seminal collection “Anthology of American Folks Music,” led in part to the resurrection of his music.
In 1977 his recording of “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” was one of only 27 songs included on the “Golden Record” sent with the Voyager spacecraft into the depths of interstellar space as representative of the best of the world’s music. According to Timothy Ferris, charged by NASA with selecting the music, "Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight."
While our hope is in the resurrection on Easter morning, our plight is with Jesus in his time of dying. Recalling that darkness in his wordless moans, Blind Willie Johnson continues to proclaim that through Jesus we conquer all.
(Want to know more? Blind Willie Johnson’s recordings are available on the internet. Liner notes to various compilations record the few facts known about him. The Timothy Ferris quote is found in “Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record,” Random House, 1978, pp 177-178.)
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 2, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
