W. E. B. DuBois called this music “the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas.” He was talking about the songs of the enslaved, the Black spirituals first sung in the rice fields of South Carolina, in fields of indigo and then cotton. These songs, he wrote, are the “sole American music.” A mysterious mixture of African rhythms, African religion, and the Christianity and hymnody of early American revivals, these Black spirituals belong to whatever you would call the soul of America, to our heart as a people—all of us now, all of us.[1]

They were songs sung by people suffering unspeakable brutalities; they were songs sung in darkness. Beautiful songs, haunting and harrowing, the thing that has always got me about them is that such people could find it in them to sing anything at all. The way Esau Jenkins put it—that great preacher and organizer among the Gullah people on Johns Island, South Carolina—he said, “when the older folks sang those songs, it helped them realize they’re trusting in God and reaching for a better day.”[2]

Songs of hope, songs of resistance, songs with double meaning, secret meanings—“Cana’an” for Canada, “Daniel” for deliverance, for example—in the twentieth century these songs were adapted to fit a civil rights movement as when Black tobacco workers in Charleston in the 1940s went on strike, they sang the old church song “I’ll Overcome Someday,” a song based on even older slave spirituals. Soon changed to “We Shall Overcome,” it’s a song you’ve heard—a song to some of hope, to others irritation.[3]

Now, please forgive my little history lecture here, but I need to talk about something, something else if I’m honest, to talk about us but in a way that I can manage safely, admittedly at a distance; we can learn from others and lean on them, you know, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I want to preach about this story Jesus tells in Luke, the story of the Good Samaritan. I want to talk about hope in darkness and the love that pulls us through, the hope you can hear even where the unspeakable happens, even tragedy and evil. I want to talk about where hope comes from.

You see, the Black spirituals get it right. At least they get this story from Luke right, this story of the Good Samaritan. It is such a familiar story that we can sometimes mistake it for a simple parable about the love and concern we should have for our neighbor, that we should all be good Samaritans to one another, to friends and strangers alike. And of course, this parable does teach that lesson; it has shaped us for centuries, albeit imperfectly, to be a more caring people.

But that’s not the story’s first lesson. Again, the Black spirituals: Esau Jenkins tells the story of an old woman he knew as child, formerly enslaved; he said, “The only thing keep her going was some days she would look up at the sun and sing ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, Nobody Knows But Jesus.’”[4] There’s also that song “Jesus Knows All About My Troubles.”[5] So many of them, so many of those spirituals are just that—desperate cries to God for help, cries knowing that although the whole world may be against you, cold and callous, at least Jesus knows your troubles; at least Jesus is there. “This is a needy time…Lord, I need you now…I’ve been in the storm so long.”[6] That’s a painful, beautiful song. That’s what I’m trying to talk about, finding Jesus in the darkness. But the thing is, you see, listening to all those songs, I’ve come to understand they are first songs about Jesus finding us. Which is the lesson, the first lesson I’m trying to underline, that although you may find yourself in unspeakable darkness, Jesus will find you. Jesus will come for you.

Because, you see, Jesus is the Good Samaritan. Before we are good Samaritans, Jesus is the Good Samaritan. That’s at least how the early Church read this story, how people like Saint Augustine read it. “The whole human race…is that man who was lying in the road,” he preached.[7] You see, the story of the Good Samaritan is first a story about how when we were in trouble, in a ditch and left for dead because of sin and the hate of the world, Jesus came to us to pick us up—to pour the “oil and wine” of the sacraments over our wounds, to carry us to the inn of the Church, paying up front all the grace we’ll need until he comes back at the end of the age to pay the rest.[8]

This story, you see, is first about what Jesus does for us before it’s a story about what we’re called to do for others. “Jesus knows all about my troubles,” “This is a needy time…Lord, I need you now…I’ve been in the storm so long,” “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus.” You see why I’ve been thinking of those old Black spirituals, because they read this story right, they point to the first truth that before we can help others, we must allow ourselves to be helped—the help of our neighbors and, of course, the help of God. Again, I’m trying to find a way out of darkness, point the way if I can. And, I guess, what I’m saying is that first it’s about allowing yourself to be found by that Samaritan Savior, by the God who won’t let you go, who doesn’t let anybody go.

And so, I guess, the question is: Who are the people singing these songs today, songs like them at least, like the Black spirituals of old, songs that are cries to God when it seems everyone else is either indifferent, uncertain, or when it seems everyone is playing the role of the priest and the Levite? Who are the people trying to sing in the darkness—in the darkness of injustice or the darkness of unspeakable tragedy? Do you need to sing such songs? Do you need to cry out to God for help? Or do you need to hear those people singing those songs, opening your heart and your ears to hear them? God may ask you someday, “Why didn’t you hear them?” God may whisper in your ear, even today, “Sing to me, my daughter, for I am with you.” I don’t know, I’m just trying to talk about hope, about where it comes from: from the cries and songs, it seems, of those suffering, wherever they are suffering, whoever they are.

Now, yes, I’m talking about our tragedies. I’m talking about today’s injustices. I’m talking about floods in Texas and fields in California. I’m talking about today’s Jericho Road, wherever that road happens to be. And I just want to say that Jesus, the Good Samaritan, is on that road too; he is still on that road. The same Jesus who said, “Go and do likewise” and who wonders if we will.[9] Amen.

[1] William S. Pollitzer, The Gullah People and Their African Heritage, 150

[2] Guy and Candie Carawan, Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?, 10

[3] Julian Bond, Julian Bond’s Time to Teach, 199; Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, Denmark Vesey’s Garden, 260

[4] Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?, 10

[5] The Moving Star Hall Singers, Been in the Storm So Long, “Jesus Knows All About My Troubles”

[6] Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?, 51

[7] Augustine, Sermon 171.2

[8] Luke 10:29-37

[9] Luke 10:37

© 2025 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield