Here is the revised, reworked sermon given in February at the Mass of Remembrance for the Charleston Nine--the last nine children (all under 13!) sold as slaves in the city of Charleston. (wr/griot)

   A Mass of Remembrance   

"For the Mighty Pretty Children
by the Waterside,

We Carry the Cross in Thanksgiving”

by
Walter Rhett, M.A., The Ohio State University
Fellow, Johns Hopkins University
Griot, Rhett’s Charleston
Member, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church

February 21, 2004

At the Church of the Holy Communion
Ashley Avenue and Cannon Street, Charleston, SC

The Reverend M. Dow Sanderson, Rector
The Reverend Daniel L. Clarke, Jr., SSC, Curate
The Right Reverend William J. Skilton, Bishop Suffragan of South Carolina
The Right Reverend Edward L. Salmon, Jr. XIII Bishop of South Carolina 

Introduction to the Sermon

This sermon was offered at the second annual Mass of Remembrance, a religious celebration to commemorate the last nine children who stood on a slave auction block in the city of Charleston to be offered for sale as slaves. Walter Rhett, founder and griot of Rhett's Charleston (a living history company specializing in events and walking and private tours), recovered the names of the nine from historical records. Rhett delivered this year's sermon for the Mass. Dr. Trevor Weston, of the College of Charleston's music department, a noted vocal composer, performed organ preludes for meditation before the service.

Rhett is also the founder and organizer of the annual mass. His sermon for the 2004 mass continues a more than two hundred year old Charleston tradition of calling the community of faith to act by faith in living accord with God’s revealed will against injustice.

 From Denmark Vesey (a free black member of the Hampstead African Methodist congregation, and later, a member of the Second Presbyterian Church), whose favorite Bible verse from Joshua led him in 1822 to organize North America’s largest resistance against slavery; to Daniel Payne, a Charleston native, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister and bishop who became the nation’s first African-American college President at Wilberforce University (which burned to the ground the night Lincoln was killed), and whose Lutheran ordination sermon in 1839 proclaimed slavery’s moral outrage against God’s laws; to Morris Brown, the Hampstead leader who, forced to leave Charleston after Vesey’s plans failed in 1822, became the second AME bishop (after founder Richard Allen) and the fouth preacher at Philadelphia’s “Mother” Bethel, the AME founding church; to the Methodist evangelist George Whitfield, ( a contemporary of “Black Harry “proclaimed colonial America’s best religious orator)arryH, who once brought a plantation and stocked it with slaves, but was also imprisoned and then expelled from Charleston for linking God’s apparent retribution by fire in 1738 to slave-owning and slave trading in the city; Charleston was the source and host of a remarkable variety of different religious views about God’s will and interventions within society—views that have faded with and outlived their historical conditions.

 Charleston Catholic bishop Patrick Neeson Lynch argued for slavery by anonomously publishing in three languages a widely distributed pro-slavery tract in Europe in 1864. John Bachman, the New York-born Lutheran pastor buried in front of the chancel at St. John’s Lutheran Church, delivered the prayer at the Secession ceremony in 1860, but helped send two of his African-American members to seminary school. William Brisbane, a Beaufort Baptist minister who believed slavery to have God’s approval, suddenly underwent a change of heart, selling his 30 slaves, then, realizing his act as insufficient, re-purchased each one, traveled to Ohio with them and freed them. Peter Fayssoux Stevens, superintendent of the Citadel who ordered the Vigilant Rifles to fire on the Star of the West (the first shots of the Civil War), became the first South Carolina bishop of an African-American denomination, the Reformed Episcopal Church, still active today. Richard Cain, the AME minister and bishop, U.S. Congressman, and co-founder of Lincolnville  preached a sermon of outrage at the 1876 killing by whites of blacks drilling as a militia in Hamburg, S.C.  Francis Grimke, the Princeton-trained former slave, black Presbyterian minister whose white Charleston grandfather sat on the South Carolina Supreme Court and whose aunts, Sarah and Angelina Grimke,were leading abolitionists was a stanch defender of equal rights from his Washington, D.C. pulpit.

 Charleston has an extensive tradition of historic dialogue, debate, and theological scholarship from its pulpits and public places that directly addresses its legacy of slavery and oppression by race, and Charlestonians, on both sides, have been at the front of the national discussion.

 In his sermon (this version revised after the Mass), Rhett addresses many themes: healing, celebration, and reconciliation in the modern city; the response of faith to the actions of God; the moral responsibility of freedom within community a century after slavery’s aftermath.

As a student of the lowcountry’s spiritual songs, Rhett’s message is deeply influenced by the way Bible content is used in the spirituals of the African-American community. These songs were always an answer for guidance, an aid to action, and a means to transform the personal and community trials experienced directly in slavery, and in the long years of racial discrimination that followed. His message follows the spiritual’s pattern of providing ordered insights, linked by scripture and linked to historical experience.

As an Episcopalian, Rhett believes the whole of the liturgy of the Episcopal service—the mass—offers each worshipper a unique opportunity to engage and connect to faith beyond words. As individuals appear  publicly before God during the mass, they  may also inwardly give themselves to God. This inward expression of trust and belief is opened and affirmed by hearing the story and its lessons (the scripture and sermon), by the prayers spoken together, and most importantly, by the “meal of recollection,” a profound act of present hope shared by all--a time, place, and means for Christ to be present and received by “faith, with thanksgiving.”

For Rhett, “remembered thanksgiving” is vital to living wholly in the power of Christ, to allowing God to work within each of us. As an expression of faith, it directs our actions to God’s will as we encounter the past, live among one another in the present, and work together toward the hope of the future. This concept and act underlines his sermon. As a state of grace, it is the source of forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, and commitment--and makes real our love for one another.

The Mass began with a processional of priests, the speaker, an acolyte, lectors, and a choir made up of local young people, from ages 6 to 14. Dressed in long red robes with white surplices, the children brought a gathered enthusiasm and an element of innocence and hope to the service. The processional music was "Lift Every Voice and Sing;" (rarely heard in a "high" Anglo-Catholic Episcopal church!). The sermon hymn was "Blessed Assurance;" the communion hymns, "Let Us Break Bread Together," and a Baptist favorite,

“ By the Blood of Jesus." The recessional was "This Little Light of Mine," with the verses; "Everywhere I go," "All in my house," and "Out in the dark" (I'm going to let it shine!) The icons in the text are from 12^th to 17^th century Ethiopia.

The site of the mass, the Church of the Holy Communion, was founded by Anthony Toomer Porter in 1848. Porter was also the founding rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Charleston, an African-American congregation, in 1865. The mission statement for the Church of Holy Communion says the church is “called into being and empowered by the Holy Spirit to worship and adore God the Father in the Mysteries of Christ Jesus' Body and Blood and to bear witness to the fullness of the catholic faith."

    The funeral mass for the sailors of the CSA Hunley, a Confederate submarine found outside Charleston's harbor, will also be The Church of the Holy Communion.  These sailors will be the last known Confederates to be buried. That mass and burial, planned for April 2004, may attract more than 30,000 people. 

    Yet the children who were sold as slaves have an equal role in history, and an even more important role in the spiritual life of the city. For their bravery is in defense of no cause expect human liberty and God's love, and their courage and comfort is by his hand alone. Without the rites of the world as a source of honor, they stand without any power other than God's love, and our love. The participation of the city's children from Calvary Baptist Church as lectors, reading the scriptures, and the role of children from Rivers Middle School, New Israel Christian Academy, and St. James Methodist in the candle lighting ceremony (in which a candle was lit and carried through the Eucharistic prayer for each of the nine children) transformed the Mass into a service in which remembrance becomes a source of jubilee. The spiritual presence of the nine became a call to the remembered Christ to be our strong help and deliverer--now and for the ages, past and forever. (wr/griot)

"For the Charleston Nine, We Carry the Cross in Thanksgiving"

by Walter Rhett

They cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of their bondage." Exodus 2:23

In the Episcopal Church there is a greeting common to the faithful. Someone says, "The Lord be with you." The answer is, "And also with you." And so I greet you today with this traditional greeting,

"The Lord be with you." [Congregational response: "And also with you."]

 I do so for a day of remembrance is a day when we greet the past.

I will tell you that standing here is not my usual place during the service. I can tell you I would be more comfortable in the pews to my left, just above the crossing, near the middle aisle. Those seats are a wonderful place to hear the choirs and soloists who perform here at the Church of the Holy Communion, and to be near the gospel reading at the crossing, and to receive communion so that I might have time for private prayer before the Feast of the Lord is ended.

I have a place worked out where I am comfortable, and I can enjoy music, preaching, and prayer. But because of God's love, I stand in a different place today. A place unfamiliar, and maybe a little uncomfortable.

But 139 years ago, nine Charleston children also found themselves standing in a high place that was probably not very familiar--and maybe more than a little uncomfortable. One by one, these children were taken from their familiar places of comfort and security and were carried or led up the steps to stand on a slave auction block, displayed before a crowd gathered to purchase them by high bid.

You have come to this Mass today because of the unusual place in time and history in which these nine children stood. For remembrance calls us not only to greet the past, but also to recall, in these days before Lent, the "passion," the experiences Christ and his faithful have suffered or undergone. The tragedy of the circumstances which surround the nine children have two parts to be observed carefully: 1) the suffering of the innocents, powerless and unheard, and 2) the prosperity of the wicked, who were blinded by custom and wealth.

Uncomfortable as it is, I am called to this observed legacy by my faith. I am a Christian. Christianity by its very nature is concerned with history. To be a Christian is to remember what the historical Jesus did on earth: among the men, women, and children of the world and of the church. As we remember his words and actions, we invite the presence of Christ now, into our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so I respond to this unthinkable suffering, this almost unbearable agony--not just because I agree logically that its horrors are wrong--not just because of a personal desire to "do the right thing," nor by any wish to be seen according to some social advantage. Nor does any inward piety substitute for carrying the banner of Christ for social justice as a part of loving each other. I am called then by my faith in God through Christ to stand next to these children, now, and to respond in remembered thanksgiving.

And even with this faith, I am here to tell you: it is still no easy place to stand. For indeed, to recall the past sometimes requires work and pain that tempts us to deny its importance and to deny its own special people. For our common history--not just black history or white history--our common history retains images that smother and squeeze our hearts and weaken our knees: the innocents suffering, the wicked basking in ease.

Strangely, as we wrestle with this history, we find ourselves learning, from both the innocent and the wicked, how to love, and how to live in obedience to the Lord. For remembering this common history compels us to present Christ to the world as an agent of justice and love. It implores us to follow His example. It leads us to a strange and unfamiliar place.

On January 18, 1865, the local paper, the Charleston Courier, announced that thirty-three African-Americans would be offered as slaves in a public auction sale.  In lots of three and thirty, there were, by the paper's account, nine children, all under the age of thirteen.

Tuesday and Wednesday were established as the traditional days in the city for the sale of slaves by public auction. Eleven o'clock (am) was the traditional time. The last auction site was at Ann and King Streets, where the auction had been moved from East Bay Street (next to the Old Exchange Building) because of the war. In December, at least seven firms had conducted public slave auctions at this site. The trade continued as an everyday feature of Charleston’s life. Children were being sold publicly and privately. Their lower price increased their demand.

As we take a long somber look and tremble at the sight and thought of infants and children being taken from the arms of their parents, snatched away from their mother’s breasts, we must look into our own hearts and souls, asking, we must look into our own hearts and souls, asking, “how are we to respond to the Master's example?" For were not the glory of eternity and the forgiveness of the sins of the world lifted from the tragedy of his own betrayal?

And so, in remembrance, we say, "The Lord Be with you.” ["And also with you."]

But where is He, as we recall these children who were the last to stand on this city's auction block? Did he not hear the cries of rage when the spiritual asked "How come we here?" Did he not hear our accusing screams of bloodless pain, renting the heavens with troubles hurled from our hearts, murmured in broken rage and empty shame as the spiritual spoke its chilling truth: "They sell my chil'un here, Lord.  They sell my chil'un here. . ."

Be not disheartened, beloved; don't despair, for in the face of the prosperity of the wicked, and of the suffering of the innocents who seemed without prospect; God, who has promised not to turn his back upon the desolate and broken in spirit, has called the righteous to look for understanding and action in his law and love, to be guided in what we think and do by his justice and mercy.

First, the word of the Lord says, by his love and law, that he wants us to resist temptation, to disavow our natural inclination to fix it ourselves, to take the responsibility on our shoulders. "Do not fret yourself because of evil doers," Psalms 37 says, "do not be jealous of those who do wrong."

God clearly wants us to put our unswerving reliance in him. God wants us to stay connected to his sufficiency and goodness. He wants us to know there is a definite bond between the Lord and the trusting soul. Again the Psalms tell us to "Take your delight in the Lord, and he shall give you your heart's desire; commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in him, and he will bring it to past . . ."

"But," we say, this situation calls forth scalding, blinding tears. These are bitter years. This case challenges and mocks our hope. This is evil so shocking that it must be engaged and defeated. Surely God is testing us. It demands of us to be bold and act on our own.

I fear not, beloved, for God does not test the righteous with evil. Again, God warns us to refrain from angry annoyance at injustice. Foreseeing our temptation, our impatience, our desire to strike out in hurt and anger and pain, He again wisely counsels: "refrain from anger, leave rage alone.” Again, he repeats, “Don't fret yourself, it only leads to evil. Don't fret yourself over the ones who prosper, the ones who succeed in evil schemes." In his written word and by his living example, God has declared that the faith-filled soul must trust, commit, be still, and wait on the Lord to make things right. For you see God has called the righteous to have a distinct public life. The righteous prosper and are measured by moral values, not material well being. But the steadfast standing of the righteous in public life against injustice is only the first part of God's response to us.

To stand steadfast and be faith-filled in our common public life, God calls us to a secret life. A prayer life. A prayer life where you and I can take absolute delight in what the Lord teaches. A secret life where our emotions are not swept to and fro by the cruelties and vagaries of the world, but are guided through the storms by God's truth. A prayer life where we can draw the strength to stand steadfast in our public life. In your prayer life—in your secret life-- set your heart upon the Lord, and mediate upon his law day and night. Put aside the uncertainties bred by anger, shame, pain, injustice, or error. Our minds must constantly feed, in unending meditation upon his counsel. For without prayer as an anchor, we enter and we too are drawn by the storm.

St. Paul tells us, “Pray unceasingly.”

And as we pray, we confess our feelings, including our fears, our hurts, and our shortcomings. In prayer, we also offer praise and thanksgiving to God. We pray to God to intercede on behalf of others. We petition God for our own needs. We pray because prayer is a powerful tool--a spiritual act that gives us strength, breaks the bonds of sin, and brings change. Prayer changes our lives—and it changes the lives of those we pray for. As we form the prayers, God fills them.

O beloved, have faith, then, in the power and absolute trustworthiness of the Lord. For "in due season," God will give you your heart's desire, he will bring it to past. There will be a season when the power of the wicked is broken! Pity not these children by the outward appearances of history then. Instead, rejoice! We know who they are, and we know what was promised to them. And by that promise, they shall be blessed.

In public and in secret, we stand fixed on Jesus. Knowing our patience is not indifference; our waiting is not weakness. God's word is resounding and clear: "Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not fret, for it only leads to evil."

But God tells us he expects even more of us. Having established a right spirit, he calls us to act, to carry our faith into the world.

How? "Love your enemy, he now tells us. "Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." And before we can say, "But Lord," he has anticipated our excuses and objections.  "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them." Again his holy word is plain: "love your enemy, do good unto them . . . then your reward shall be great, and you will be the children of the most high."

By loving our enemies God does not mean imitating them or loving the things they love. Christ means for us to open our hearts in faith, without fear or desire for revenge, to pray in our secret life for the fallen souls of those who abused you. For when we pray and love and bless our enemies, we will pass through the trials of history and join the sacred circle of the children of the most high, and be brought into communion by thanksgiving with the nine.

And so beloved, as we stand in righteousness, pray in secret, we must love in charity. But history cannot be changed. Can we be forgiven of the past whose pain we know today? Beloved, be assured of God's mercy and justice.

In 1 Corinthians, God reminds us that in his mercy is the power to transform. Paul reminds us that we do not sow the body that is to be--God will give it the body he has chosen. God will change us. Our perishable nature may put on the imperishable. For where God stands in love, there is a divine justice that unites heaven and earth. By his mercy, we are called from sin, and changed.

And so beloved, we stand in righteous, pray in secret, love in charity. We are transformed by mercy. I stand to tell you when God acts in mercy; no auction block binds his history. St. Paul reminds us, not to be “strangers to the covenant of promise.” For in Christ, we “have been brought near” to God and his perfect love. And by his promise, these children of slavery were the last. The last. By the greatness of his mercy, God broke the slavery chains at last. On Feb. 19, just thirty-one days after being hearing the shouts of bids against their human cry, these nine children were set free.

The streets of Charleston on February 19, 1865 were littered with fires and the ruins of a cause that deeply scarred so many hearts. But along these streets the winds of the Holy Spirit stirred the people like it was the time of Pentecost.. God had broken the power of the wicked. On February 19, 1865, none were strangers to the covenant of his promise--all the slaves of Charleston were set free.

By every account--every diary, book, and magazine; every Union or Confederate officer or soldier, every person black or white--the people who were newly freed gave thanks for this powerful victory to Jesus. They singularly gave thanks to God. They called out his Holy name in praise. The crowds sung spirituals of Jubilee. They prayed in thanksgiving. They danced, filled with the Holy Spirit. They cried over what their Savior could do, not only in the life of the world to come, but also here and now. O these nine children--now free--were living, joyful witnesses of how God preserves and delivers his children, gives them a refugee, and sets them down in Zion. And as we recall this great deliverance, as we greet the past in remembrance and obey His will, our actions, too, come to be guided and empowered by the same Holy Spirit.

And so beloved, we lift up these nine children, grateful for what they taught us.
         Their pain ---- tells us to pull together in love.
         Their suffering ---- remains us that we must be sensitive to each other.
         Their fear  ----- gives us the courage to stand and resist injustice and evil.
         Their freedom --- inspires us to pray and give thanks for God’s love and mercy.

And your presence here today gives life to these truths--that we are bound together, loved by the same Lord, forgiven of the past if we amend ourselves, that we are one body as we embrace the future. For as the rector of this church reminded us in last year's mass, we are neither master nor slave, but one in Christ Jesus.

But God still was not yet finished when he sent the winds of freedom to Charleston. For God called the ex-slaves to pick up the cross. God called the ex-slaves to reunion—to remember freedom--through the suffering they had undergone.

 For in this suffering, the illuminating center was and is the cross. The cross compels us to see and experience a union which strips us of all but faith and tests us to see if we can hold on when we are shaken. Shaken, we, too, cry out, within that mystery are given our redemption by faith. We see and know the way, but never the hour; for faith in anchored in the openness of time.

Yes, He called those newly freed from the yoke of slavery to bear the cross. He called those celebrating the jubilee to remember those lost in the suffering. He called those rejoicing in prayer to pray for those who were missing. But finally God called the ex-slaves to complete the sacrifice involved in remembrance—those former slaves, brimming with freedom, were given a profound spiritual task—they were called to bear the cross in thanksgiving.

History shows fifteen thousand people took part in the first citywide emancipation celebration, held in March 1865. The parade began at Marion Square. One of the last exhibits of that parade was a slave auction block, with a mock auction of mother and child.

The news accounts say that people fainted, passed out, and were overcome with grief and sorrow. But the slave auction block was not to remind the crowd of slavery's cruelest pain. Despite the immense grief, the emotional devastation, it was the most profound symbol of their mothers and fathers, their brothers and sisters, their sons and daughters who had been sold away. The block recalled the children who had been sold away, who were not present to celebrate with family and friends that day of jubilee.

The only way to include those missing souls was to honor the pain of their memory in thanksgiving. So in this community over fifteen thousand of the faithful gathered and endured that pain in order to keep secure the memory and offer thanks for those “many thousand gone."

These families faced the pain of the mock auction block because they knew that their pain would be shattered before the power of faith.  They knew that their pain was only temporary, a part of the life of this world, but that their faith would hold through eternity. Beloved, do you realize how they held on and held on and held on until the pain dissolved and they saw the faces of their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters all bound in thanksgiving by the countenance of Jesus.  Oh--then--the pain couldn't touch them any more.

Thus for the darkest hour in the lives of the nine children, we are called to pick up their cross and offer praises of thanksgiving.

And as the remembered Christ joins us in our midst--just as He joined the ex-slaves who picked up the cross in the midst of their jubilee--the distance of time and space overcome, then and today, united by our thanksgiving for his grace. For we neither follow or precede one another. In Christ, we are all present in the eternal now.

For as the ex-slaves remembered their children; even more, they remembered what the Lord could do. They knew their wounds had been healed by their Redeemer's wounds. Their price had been paid by the very blood of Jesus. Their love of those who were missing was blessed by the Deliverer’s Peace.

And by our remembrance, we who carry the cross in thanksgiving today are also healed, blessed in love, transformed by mercy--purchased by blood.  Glad‑‑so glad, “that trouble don’t last always.” And by our presence, let us greet the Lord and worship him “in spirit and in truth.”

God did not abandon the nine, and nor will he abandon us. Our struggle for justice is God’s struggle as well. And the resurrection of his sonalready tells us what the ultimate victory will be.

Beloved the word of the Lord, both written and incarnate, by His actions towards and among the faithful, allows us to greet this day in our history, to recall how in memory of this most unusual place and time, the Lord we call upon has spoken, and has saidto:

     Stand in righteous                                                       (Trust God to act)
     Pray in secret                                                                (Fix our hearts on Him day and night)
     Love in charity                                                              (Pray for and love our enemies)
     Be transformed by mercy                                         (Give ourselves to Him)
     And carry the cross in thanksgiving                     (Be healed, strengthened, and united by
                                                                                       Him)

And so at this mass of remembrance, I greet you with this greeting at the heart of our covenant of promise. We greet, too, Myra, Dolly, and Rose; John, Thomas, and Benjamin;  a girl, unnamed, aged ten;  a little girl, three; an infant, a year old. We greet them with the greeting that contains in its simple message all the glory of our highest hope for the nine, for ourselves and for each other, now and forever:

                         "May the Lord be with you."   ["And also with you.”]

May the Christ of history inform and make real to our hearts the glory of the Christ of faith.

 Amen.

Walter Rhett may be contacted at walterrhett@yahoo.com. His sermon is also available at the website,  Rhett’s Charleston (keyword: rhettscharleston ).