An Evensong of Spirituals

On Holy Tuesday we will gather at the beginning of Holy Week for a time of reflection, both through the spoken word and music. We invite you to gather and use this time and space to give your journey over to God for a moment, letting the words of scripture and reflections by Luke A. Powery, and the music of traditional African Spirituals, inspire your sacred space.

The reflections for this Holy Tuesday service are from Were You There? Lenten Reflections on the Spirituals, by Luke A. Powery, an associate professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School.

In these devotions for the season of Lent, Luke A. Powery leads the reader through the spirituals as they confront the mystery of Christs atoning death and victory over the grave. Each selection includes the lyrics of the spiritual, a reflection by the author on the spirituals meaning, a Scripture verse related to that meaning, and a brief prayer.
The spirituals are considered valuable not only for their sublime musical expression but for their profound insights into the human condition and Christian life. Many of them focus on the climax of the Christian drama, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the ways in which those events bring about the liberation of God’s people.

Lent is a season of penitential reflection and repentance on the path toward the hope of Easter. That path walks in a dry desert where there is no water. The enslaved lived in their own inhumane wilderness for years yet still sang songs of hope. From these cultural wells, we still drink. Please join us for this special Evensong on Tuesday, March 31st at 7:00 PM in the New Chapel as these two worlds (cultural-historical Black music with the church calendar) are merged to guide us as we travel the forty days of the Lenten wilderness with courage and honesty. This service will also be livestreamed on our YouTube channel.