Redemption Songs: Lent and Liberation

Day 1 of 5: From the Bottomless Pit

Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you.
Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise.
-Psalm 51:11-15 (NIV)

Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
-Bob (Robert Nesta) Marley, “Redemption Song”

We define prophets as those connected to the Divine, appointed intermediaries who deliver messages to God’s people—willing or otherwise. Neither education, access, nor exposure restricts their capacity as messengers. Obscured by what we might perceive from the outside as their legitimacy, the power of a prophet’s message is undeniable.

Those of us descended from enslaved Africans carry that prophetic legacy in our DNA. It inhabits our oral traditions, our music, and the art we create with our hands and our lives. I cannot envision recounting our liberation stories except through the lens of faith. We are heirs to the psalmist’s promise and also to their plea: “Open my lips Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise.”

Black Liberation theologian Dr. James Hal Cone consistently affirmed God’s Blackness, evidenced by identifying with those ground to dust under the jackboots of oppression. We experience this affirmation in the Bible’s two primary redemptive acts: the Exodus and the Resurrection. In each narrative, we overcome all that precludes our escape from the bottomless pits, from the tyranny of oppression, colonialism, erasure. It is not the violation of the pirates that we fear most, rather that we might be cast out of the presence of Father/Mother/God.

Ours is an unbreakable covenant. We are bound. For all worshipers seeking to live into this prophetic legacy, what are our obligations? And, as it relates to the modern church and our worship — were we cast into the bottomless pit, or were we the ones who did the casting?

From either position, we plead for restoration. On this Ash Wednesday, from wherever we are, the goal is up and out. Lord, in Your Mercy, hear our prayer.

Chelle A. Carter-Wilson

Day 1 of 5: From the Bottomless Pit

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