Swing low, sweet chariot. Remember that song? It’s a camp song. It’s a favorite of choral groups. It began as an African American gospel spiritual that may not have been part of every church’s culture, but certainly is a part of American culture and history.

Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home. I looked over Jordan and what did I see? Coming for to carry me home. A band of angels coming after me. Coming for to carry me home. Swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home. Oh if you get there before I do, coming for to carry me home. Tell all my friends I’m coming too. Coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot…

As gospel songs go, it’s lyrically beautiful. The tune is simple and haunting, lending itself to four part harmony. It’s biblically rich, evoking Elijah’s departure into the heavens, and Moses looking over Jordan as Joshua prepared to take the Israelites across. It reminds us all of the resurrection and life everlasting where we hope to see again those we have loved and lost to death.

The song is more complex than it would appear however. Not only it this a song of trust in God’s deliverance, it is a song about opposing and escaping the bondage of slavery in America. It is both a protest against an unjust system, and a message of intent to run away. The sweet chariot and band of angels was the underground railway. The Jordan was the Mason-Dixon Line.

Jesus’s teaching that we call the Beatitudes, is like that gospel spiritual in having content that is veiled to the casual hearer. On one level it is a spiritual teaching to the disciples. There are words of comfort and encouragement for the vulnerability that comes with following Jesus. There is an equal and opposite warning that a life of prosperity, happiness, and a good name cannot make anyone invulnerable.

On another level, the beatitudes are a protest against a prevailing social order. It is a commentary on who we choose to be our comforter. It is a message of encouragement, to not lose the thread of following the Way of Jesus out of anxiety for the current moment.

Jesus endlessly protested the assumption that poverty was a sign of God’s judgment and a justification to treat the poor as if they deserve to suffer and are expendable. He challenged the practice of honoring those who have more resources, as if they are more precious to God.

When Jesus said these things, he made enemies. Of religious people who didn’t want their categories of blessing and judgment disturbed. Of political leaders who relied on poor and enslaved people to labor without feeling worthy of fair wages or freedom.

Jesus taught his followers to trust God in all things. So if God’s Spirit is our comforter, maybe we can let go of the need to comfort ourselves in unhealthy ways. With addictions to substances and to power. With endless consumerism over-using and using up resources that ought to be shared and conserved.

We all know anxiety is a thing, right? It’s no respecter of age or circumstances. Anxiety manifests in the mind and the body. And that’s never good.

Paul was dealing with anxiety when he wrote to the Corinthians not to listen to divisive voices. Was Jesus raised from the dead? No he wasn’t, some were saying.

Because there were certain social-religious-political costs to believing that Jesus was raised from the dead. Embedded anti-Roman sentiments. Complexity and disagreement in faith matters for religious officials and synagogues to manage. Challenges to the social order when formerly despised and rejected people expected to be able to start over. All things causing anxiety.

So, if Christians could just let go of that disruptive resurrection belief, then they would be less troublesome, more acceptable everywhere. But this was a problem. Not only was this contrary to the historic apostolic witness, it meant that Jesus did not overcome sin and death. And the point of following Jesus would be…what, exactly?

Anxiety can paralyze and immobilize us. It causes us to withdraw into ourselves and build walls. It draws energy out of us and leaves us exposed. Our minds become mired in doubts and fears.

Desperation rather than wisdom becomes the ground of our actions.

Jeremiah might as well have said, anxious are those who trust in mere mortals, who make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from God. Like shrubs in the desert are the anxious, living in a bone dry and lonely place.

Where Jesus, Paul, and Jeremiah come together is in their commitment to God’s Way in all circumstances. They share the constant teaching that God sends us messages of encouragement through many voices. They remind us that no matter happens to us, we should employ every means we have to not give in to anxiety, and to remain faithful to Jesus.

Bad theology does not restrain God. There is no destructive human social order that can last forever. The community that forms around the conviction that God’s love is for all is the community that bears the good news of Jesus. For, “They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green. In the year of drought it is not anxious, it does not cease to bear fruit.”

This is the spiritual song that Jesus gives his followers to sing. A lyrical, steady, song of resistance and proclamation of deliverance. A hymn of resurrection hope, and trust that God’s love is prevailing now and always will.