Spirituals are a treasured part of Americana. I adore their iconic intimacy although the way they have evolved has taken them on a distant journey from their humble roots. The slaves, who sang these songs usually while working, likely never thought that in the 2023, “highfalutin” arrangements of their music would be sung in opulent church settings such as this one.

It almost feels like stealing when we sing these pieces with our happy faces, and we benefit from their comforting message. We hardly acknowledge the hardship out of which these songs were begotten. Shackled together in 100-degree heat, working their fingers to the bone, and aching backs bent over, they sang. This music was their solace, their healing balm in the hope of an escape. And here we are, embracing and enjoying their music for our own spiritual benefit. Didn’t the world steal enough away from them? Must we now also steal away their music? I think so.

I imagine the slaves would be in awe that their music has transcended its humble roots and has found its way into mainstream Americana by those of us who have grown to love it. In its day, the African American spiritual was code language. Embed in the words are secrets about the underground railroad. You may hear “steal away to Jesus,” as if one was seeking spiritual refuge to the afterlife; but the slaves were saying “steal a way to Jesus.” They were praying for a road out, not a road to. A temporary solution was a way to Canada or the free states. A permanent solution was a way out of a mindset. A change in mind is all the world would have needed to set the slaves free, instantaneously.

Seeing others as property, objectifying them, and turning them into something less than yourself is the root cause of enslavement. Jesus was a code word for freedom, but not to another U.S. state, but to another state of mind. It was freedom from concepts that they needed. When the song says, “I ain’t got long to stay here,” it means that a mind can be changed now. People thought that a person could be “owned.” That is what enslaves another, thinking of “them” as an object, not the eternal subject of the great I AM.

The slaves understood that human dignity was deserved by all persons. I wish we could “steal” their mindsets and live peacefully with our brothers and sisters. The section of the piece which speaks of “the trumpet sounds within-a my soul,” is an inner awakening. It’s not about the afterlife. It’s about this life and learning of the preciousness of all human life.

The slaves prayed to steal a way out of their conditions, and to steal away the insidious beliefs that people could be property. Now we “steal” their message by accepting this deep truth. The world saw the slaves as property, and all they wanted was the world to see them as humans. It’s a simple request, but they had to work to steal it away, to snatch belligerent mindsets that only needed to be awakened by a trumpet sound within their soul.

We all need to be awakened by the sound of the trumpet. To see yourself in others, you’re home free, and you don’t need to steal away or steal a way. You are the way when you see equality in all of creation. Why wait for the trumpet sound? You can do it now.  Soli Deo Gloria!