Re-digging the Wells

“The Destruction of Black Civilization,” Chancellor Williams

Listervelt Middleton, a poet, journalist, television producer, author and host of the show “For the People,” once wrote, “minute by minute, hour by hour, when you lose your history, you lose your power.”

In the opening to his classic work, “The Destruction of Black Civilization,” Chancellor Williams has this story:

“Whatever happened to the people of Sumer?” the traveler asked the old man. “Ah,” the old man sighed, “they lost their history, so they died.”

“Minute by minute, hour by hour, when you lose your history, you lose your power.”

In Genesis 26, the second son of Abraham and first son of Sarah and Abraham, Isaac, is forced to move his family to another location by the Philistine King Abimelech. Isaac moves his family to a place called Gerar.

Once there, he discovers the Philistines have stopped up the wells his father Abraham had dug. Isaac then begins to re-dig the wells his father had dug, and he gave them the same names his father had given them.

Those wells were essential to the survival and thriving of Isaac, his family, and for the existence of the people of faith in Yahweh.

You see, wells in ancient biblical times were more than places to quench a thirst or haul from for cooking, washing and cleaning. Wells in ancient biblical times were place markers where someone met God.

Hagar, the enslaved Egyptian of Sarah and Abraham, fled from them because of Sarah’s cruelty and Abraham’s spinelessness; she fled into the wilderness and fell to the ground wanting to die.

It was at that moment when the Bible says, “the angel of the Lord appeared and spoke a promise to her, her son, Ishmael, and their descendants, and then pointed out to her a well of water for her to be refreshed.

Hagar, this Black African from Egypt, at that moment became the only person to name God in all of the Bible, as she named the well “Beer Lahai Roi,” which means “The God who sees me.”

Wells were important for more than obtaining drinking water in the ancient texts of scripture.

In the New Testament, when a tired Jesus came upon the city called Sychar, near the plot of ground the patriarch Jacob had given to his son Joseph, Jesus sat down by a well called “Jacob’s Well.” A woman came to that well at noon with a water jar and Jesus asked her for a drink. That conversation at Jacob’s well in Sychar became the place where an overwhelmed and weary woman met the son of God. She was so impacted by this encounter she dropped her water jar and began to preach good news to the Samaritans in the vicinity, saying “come see a man…”

Wells have great significance to the ancient peoples of the biblical narrative because wells became places that provided cool refreshment from the hot sun. They were not only places where a particular history of a people was passed down, but they also were places where people had an encounter with the Holy.

Isaac had to re-dig the wells his daddy Abraham had dug so his physical need for water could be satisfied, but also because this was where his history and legacy could be passed down. His future could be cemented by the promises of God, who told him at one of those wells, “I will be with you…I will protect you and prosper your progeny.”

I believe African people living in America, and in particular Black people of faith, have some wells to re-dig, much like our ancestors dug in days long ago.

We have wells to re-dig. I’m not speaking of the physical wells that Isaac dug, but the spiritual wells of the soul where the subterranean streams of living waters of the Holy Spirit flow.

The enemies of truth in this nation have stopped up the wells of cultural memory by banning books that separate truth from trash concerning this nation’s founding on the backs of native people and stolen Black bodies from Africa. All because the founders of this nation put profit over people, Black people, by peddling in human flesh. That is what sin is.

The enemies we face have stopped up the wells by re-writing curriculums that try to persuade people to think that slavery was a benefit to Black people.

The enemies we face have clogged up the wells of biblical truth with bad theology that purports that women should be prevented from preaching and pastoring and that Black theology and social justice gospel are not Christian principles.

We must re-dig the wells that refresh us in the waters of liberation by a God who told Moses, “I have heard the cries of my people and I’ve seen their suffering, and I have come down to do something about it, so Moses go deliver my people.” That’s called Social Justice.

We must re-dig the wells that remind us of spiritual giants like Dutty Boukman in Haiti, Reverends Gabriel Prosser in Richmond, Virginia; Nathaniel Turner in Southampton, Virginia; Harriett Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Jarena Lee, and Henry Highland Garnet; Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Martin Delany, Ida B. Wells, David Walker, and so many others whose witness in their works demonstrates that the God of the slaveowner and the God of the enslaved is not the same God.

Re-dig the wells because our story resides deep in the recesses of the soul and reminds us that “what we have done as a people we can still do again” and that our God is on the side of the oppressed, to quote the late James Cone.

“Minute by minute, hour by hour, when you lose your history, you lose your power.”

Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.” Contact the church by email at [email protected] or by phone at 219-944-0500.