from Sorrow Songs—the Ground of Hope
(part seven)

We turn now to an examination of the place and significance of the notion of judgment. Taking their clue from the word picture given by Jesus in the Gospels, the judgment was the climax of human history. This made a tremendous appeal to the imagination. The figure of Gabriel was added to the imagery of Jesus. There are many references to Gabriel :

O get your trumpet Gabriel
and come down on the sea.
Now don't you sound your trumpet
Till you get orders from me—
I got a key to that Kingdom
I got a key to that Kingdom
And the world can't do me no harm.

To mention the refrain of one other song :

Gabriel, Gabriel, blow your trumpet!
My Lord says he's going to rain down fire.

Some of these songs are almost pure drama. Consider this very old hymn, no record of which is to be found in any of the available collections:

Oh, He's going to wake up the dead,
Going to wake up the dead,
God's going to wake up the dead.
One of these mornings bright and fair,
God's going to wake up the dead.

The judgment is personal and cosmic so that even the rocks and mountains, the stars, the sea, are all involved in so profound a process:

My Lord what a morning!
My Lord what a morning!
When the stars begin to fall.

You will hear the trumpet sound
To wake the nations underground,
Standing at my God's right hand,
When the stars begin to fall.

The matter of most crucial importance is this—a man is brought face to face with his own life—personal accountability is the keynote:

When the master calls me to Him
I'll be somewhere sleeping in my grave.
In that great day when he calls us to him
I'll be somewhere sleeping in my grave.

The deep intimacy between the soul and God is constantly suggested. Even the true name of the individual is known only to God. There are references to the fact that the designation, Child of God, is the only name that is necessary. This gnosis of the individual is an amazing example of the mystical element present in the slave’s religious experience. The slave’s answer to the use of terms of personal designation that are degrading is to be found in his private knowledge that his name is known only to the God of the entire universe. In the judgment everybody will add last know who he is, a fact which he has known all along.

O’ nobody knows who I am, who I am,
Till the Judgment morning.

Judgment takes place in time. It is a moment when the inner significance of a man's deeds is revealed. God shall deal with each according to his history. It is with reference to the Judgment that life took on a subdued character. Everybody is judged. The Judge is impartial. There is distinct continuity between the life on earth and the Judgment. Excuses are of no avail. God, the Judge, knows the entire story.

O’, He sees all you do,
He hears all you say,
My Lord’s-a-writing all the time.

Judgment was not thought of as being immediately after death. There is a time element between death and final judgement. Life, death, judgment, this was the thought sequence. When the final judgment takes place there will be no more time. What takes place after judgment has a necessitous, mandatory character ascribed to it. Man can influence his judgment before death—after death everything is unalterable. This notion of the ultimate significance of life on earth is another aspect of the theory of time to which we have made reference. Here is a faithful following of the thought of the Gospels.

And yet there is more to be said concerning the idea of the Judgment. What does the concept say? Are we dealing with a matter of fact and of literal truth? If we are, then the symbolism of the Judgment is necessarily an essential symbolism. What is the literal truth seeking expression in this symbolism? It is this: The life of man is significantly capable of rising to the demands of maximum moral responsibility. That which is capable of the maximum moral responsibility functioning in the tiny compass of single events takes on the aspects of the beyond-event, hence beyond time, therefore eternal. The conclusion seems inescapable that man is interpreted as having only mortal manifestations, but even these mortal manifestations have immortal overtones. If this were not true then there would be no significance in the symbolic fact of judgment. The literal truth requires a symbolism that is completely vehicular or revelatory.

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 216-219
Originally published in The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death)

This week of sitting with the sorrow songs has been, for me, a jubilant week of listening. I have listened to Thurman, of course, and I have listened to my own story of learning and singing these songs. And I have had a week of precious listening to young leaders who were willing to share with me their own sorrows and their own hopes.

We are living in an astonishing time, one which was impossible from what my culture has taught me. “It can’t happen here” is an expression that contains so much hope in the (yet incomplete) democracy that my nation has been building for a couple of centuries. But of course, the rush toward this moment could happen, and is happening, when our democracy seems only to offer a choice between two parties dominated by corporate interests and money.

In the sorrow songs, Thurman shares, there is the Judgment, and the certainty of that judgment becomes a cause for hope. Judgment of each person’s story happens after time has ceased. It thus becomes eternal. I’m struck by the ways that the promise of the ultimate success of human liberation that will put an end to classes and thus to class struggle is a sense of history—including my own story—that has a direction toward the start of something completely new, the times of socialism and communism which will, in some ways, allow the story of humanity to begin.

I remember Professor Mark Heim describing Marxism as a kind of new religion; and while I argued with some of his formulations, when I listen to Thurman, I wonder how right Professor Heim might have been. Is is a religious notion that when working and oppressed people unite, and struggle together against the forces of capital, we have nothing to lose but our chains? Or is it fact?

Thurman says “The life of man is significantly capable of rising to the demands of maximum moral responsibility..” This I find proven in my daily life, in my conversation with a young Palestinian leader, in the young community organizer on her way to a new assignment, in the young man making decisions about how he acts within his union and whether or not he should pursue another degree, better to serve self and society. It has been my joy tis week, to spend time with each of these precious souls, to listen to them and appreciate them, and in my own way to encourage them to “keep on keeping’ on.” What a blessing for me! And, I hope, what a blessing for the world.

Tomorrow is the last day of “Sorrow Songs.” Stay tuned for what’s next.