to live on, and a giver of hope to the afflicted. And of course, there was a problem.
The religious authorities of the time said, “No, no, no, no. This is the Sabbath. This day is for something particular, and it is not for labor, and that includes healing.” In attacking Jesus, they also attacked the woman. And Jesus responded by essentially breaking down the meaning of Deuteronomy. Jesus said you have to untie your donkey and feed it so it will live. The critical takeaway from his words and actions is that certain things must be done out of necessity, even on the Sabbath. Wasn’t the necessity of healing this woman one of those realities? Why should a woman who had suffered for eighteen years have to wait one more day? The “proper” day for healing was one day too long. The time for hope and healing was now. As the prophet Isaiah said, “You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (58:12).
Fast-forward sixteen centuries and August 1619 marks the arrival of the first Africans to British North America. These first Africans were taken from Angola in West Central Africa. They were captured in a series of wars that were part of much broader Portuguese hostilities against the Kongo and Ndongo kingdoms and other states. They were put on board the San Juan Bautista, which carried three hundred and fifty captives bound for Vera Cruz, on the coast of Mexico. Nearing her destination, the slave ship was attacked in the Gulf of Mexico by two English privateers, the White Lion and the Treasurer, and robbed of fifty to sixty Africans.
The two privateers then sailed to Virginia, where the White Lion arrived at Point Comfort (ironically named), or present-day Hampton, Virginia, around the end of August. John Rolfe, a prominent planter and merchant (and formerly the husband of Pocahontas), reported that “twenty and odd Negroes” were “bought for victuals” (italics added). The majority of the Angolans were acquired by wealthy and well-connected English planters, including Governor Sir George Yeardley and the cape, or head, merchant, Abraham Piersey. The Africans were sold into bondage despite Virginia having no clear-cut laws sanctioning slavery.1
Chattel slavery already existed in New Spain, including Florida, and the Spaniards had also brought over Africans.2 But these English-speaking colonists brought over these twenty Africans; some were chattel slaves, some were indentured servants. A few, over time, may have eventually been freed. It was the beginning of one of the great foundations of the American economy: chattel slavery.
I don’t need to get into all the history here, though many people need to read it. I would advise you to go online to the New York Times. They have an incredible project called “The 1619 Project.” You will find essays and historical accounts. The point of it is what the great historian John Hope Franklin said, “We must tell the unvarnished truth about slavery.”3 I can tell you in my education, which was from the Jesuits, this unvarnished truth was never mentioned.
My intent is not to shame, or blame, the descendants of slaveholders nor those who are the descendants of the enslaved. I am telling this story because it is a biblical story. As I said, history does not exactly repeat itself, but it damn sure rhymes. Those first Africans in America, my ancestors, were a people who were born on the water: the experience of being on ships for century upon century of the Atlantic slave trade. After one week or two weeks or three weeks of seeing nothing but a horizon of water, they began to forget who they were.
When they landed on these new shores, they began the process of seasoning, as it was said, of creating a new person. One who would be, in fact, docile and obedient as a slave. Like those Jews in Babylonian captivity, they sang songs that recalled their homeland, the old continent. But they also began to incorporate new elements of those songs because even though some had been Muslim and others held traditional African beliefs, they were introduced to Christianity. When these Africans heard the psalms, they heard the stories of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the stories resonated. Many incorporated Jesus’s liberating message of hope into their reality.
My people were born on the water and came into full being on these shores. They were not Americans in their founding fathers; reality. And they were not quite Africans either to a degree. They were a “new people.” Thus, we created the name African American, which developed over the centuries. They became a people not only by recognizing their existence, but also through the challenge and struggle of Native Americans, and they recognized the struggle of other people who had come to these shores or came across the borders. In the eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they became the real beacons of the true democracy that we try to bring to America.
History does not repeat itself exactly, but it does rhyme.
When Martin King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,”4 he was diving deep into the words of Isaiah and the desire for a new day. It was the hope for one who could repair the breach. We are called to live into this calling. In her poem delivered at the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton, Maya Angelou said that we cannot go back and undue the lessons of history, however, if we learn from history, we do not have to re-live the mistakes that were made.5 If we face our history honestly, openly, and lovingly, a new day can be born. Restoring relations, recognizing that all who have come to these shores and who have lived here for generations and who had lived here before anyone from Europe or Africa even arrived are called to live into a beloved community. That was the dream that Isaiah lived out. That was the dream that Isaiah called the people of Israel and Judea to live into. That was the dream of God that Jesus embodied in healing a woman who had been bent over for eighteen years.
Today, Episcopal Churches in Jamestown, other parts of Virginia, and across the United States will ring bells at 3 p.m. Eastern time to commemorate that landing at Point Comfort in Jamestown four hundred years ago. To ring the bells, as the prophet Isaiah would have rung, calling us to be something better. We are invited to be restorers of the streets we live on, to be repairers of the breach, to give hope to the afflicted, to satisfy the hungry.
This bell-ringing can be seen as a metaphor for the truth that in America, we are all aliens in a strange land, and yet we are called to sing the Lord’s song—even in a foreign land—that we might be the new people that God has called us all to be. May we live into that reality as followers of Jesus Christ.
1. This information is noted in numerous history sources. See: https://historicjamestowne.org/history/the-first-africans/ and https://www.monticello.org/slavery-at-monticello/african-slavery-british-north-america/africans-british-north-america.
2. This information is available at http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/the_spanish_and_new_world_slav.
3. John Hope Franklin, “The 1619 Project,” New York Times Magazine, August 18, 2018, 1.
4. Mychal Denzel Smith, “The Truth about ‘The Arch of the Moral Universe,’ ” HuffPost, January 18, 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-smith-obama-king_n_5a5903e0e4b04f3c55a252a4.
5. Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning,” a poem written on the occasion of the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton as the 42nd President of
