Joni shares the power of African-American spirituals to explore the topic of suffering. The song “Were You There?” reminds us all that, yes, we were there when they crucified our Lord, because he died for us.
I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a story about my friend, Billy Burnett.
Billy’s people were poor. He was born in a sharecropper’s cabin on the corner of the Jimmy Lynch farm that had no heat, no running water, and no electricity. Billy’s daddy worked hard in the fields, and it was a good day when Willie, his dad, finally earned enough to move his family into a house in Texarkana. They still could not afford to install gas and water, but it was home sweet home. Willie worked hard at the town sawmill, while Mama Teal—that’s what everyone called Billy’s mother—Mama Teal made ends meet by squeezing in domestic work at the homes of white folks. And when harvesting time rolled around, she took her children to help pick cotton.
Early each morning, the truck would stop at the edge of the field and unload the workers, who would get their sacks from the field boss. They would spread out and begin picking, walking, stooping, stretching, row after row after row. Little Billy worked eight to ten hours a day to fill his sack. He scrambled to keep up with the older men who earned more, but he knew his fifty cents a day was needed. Billy’s childhood, though, ended one summer afternoon in 1958. He remembers the air was hot and hissing with bugs, and there he was bending over and chopping cotton—a process that thinned the cotton plants. He stood to stretch his tired back and shield his eyes. Through waves of heat, he saw his elders shimmering in the distance like ghosts, and a thought seized him, “oh, Lord, is this how my life is supposed to be?” The next instant, he heard King Davis, the burly field boss, shout, “Get back to work, boy!” And the twelve-year-old went home that day feeling very old.
Nearly one hundred years had passed since the Emancipation Act, but this little boy was still feeling the weight of being a descendant of slaves. Yet there was no bitterness, for something else had also been handed down from his ancestors: a love for Jesus Christ. It’s why Billy’s family knew so many hymns, including African-American spirituals. Back in the seventeenth century, families of slaves were fascinated by Biblical stories that paralleled their own hardships, and they created spirituals that retold these stories. Spirituals were a slave’s way of expressing their love for Jesus, a greater Deliverer than anyone even in the Abolitionist movement. It’s what makes African-American spirituals so unique—they can only be appreciated in the context of suffering.
It’s why Mama Teal would sing while bending over her washboard in the backyard. Often it was “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” This humble woman identified with the suffering of Jesus so closely, she sang about it as though she could hear the nails tearing through her Savior’s hands. Although his East Texas childhood is now a distant memory, Billy Burnett still knows these old songs. He served with distinction at Joni and Friends as our Chief Financial Officer some years ago, and I would sometimes hear him hum these spirituals in the hallways.
Were you there when they crucified the Lord? Yes, you were. Right along with Mama Teal, Billy Burnett, and the millions of others for whom Christ died. This Easter week, remember that you were in the heart of your bleeding Savior when all your sins were nailed to the tree with him. In that way, you were there when they crucified your Jesus.
© Joni and Friends