Lift Every Voice and Sing - June 25
Today’s Readings: Psalm 46 or Psalm 102; Sirach 39:1-11; Ephesians 6:10-18; Luke 1:57-75
Today’s Reflection
In our calendar of feasts and fasts for the holy women and men of our faith, June 25 is the day on which we honor the life and legacy of James Weldon Johnson. In our Episcopal tradition, we commemorate Johnson because of his inspiring contributions to American culture as an author, educator, lawyer, politician, diplomat, and civil rights advocate.
Before he went on to serve as a consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua, professor of creative writing, or a national leader in the NAACP, Weldon served as the principal of the Stanton School, an academy for African American students in Jacksonville, Florida. While principal there, Johnson wrote a poem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which his brother James Rosamund Johnson put to music so that Stanton students could sing it for an assembly in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. That song was eventually adopted as the official song of the NAACP, is considered to be the Black National Anthem, and is now often sung alongside the National Anthem at many public events.
Maybe I heard the song from time to time during Black History Month through the years, and more likely at the inner-city school, Campbell Junior High, that I attended for three years of my growing up. But I had never had the opportunity to sing it regularly and truly appreciate it until I was a student at the Seminary of the Southwest, when this anthem was included in the rotation of church music that we sang together in our daily worship at Christ Chapel. The song is truly powerful, a rousing call to “sing a song full of faith” and “a song full of hope” and a prayer acknowledging that it is God who has “brought us thus far on the way… and led us into the light.”
As we reflect on the life of James Weldon Johnson today, alongside the specific scriptures appointed for this feast day, I commend to you the verses of his poem turned anthem. May we all be inspired to lift our voices and sing, letting “our rejoicing rise high as the skies” as we pray for God’s help to “march on ‘til victory is won.”
—Becky+
Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
—James Weldon Johnson
Questions for Self-Reflection
Which songs stir your faith and inspire you to keep marching on? Which hymns and songs have you most missed singing this past year?
Daily Challenge
Listen to this rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by a concert choir of college students from around the country, made during the pandemic, or read more about James Weldon Johnson’s life here.