Give Me Jesus
The spiritual we are looking at this morning, Give Me Jesus, speaks of both the comfort and security of a life in Christ and the cry of a disciple’s heart. While the spirituals are a particular genre of American music birthed out of the African American experience of slavery and suffering, they, like the Psalms, have a universal aspect to them as they speak or sing of the common human experience of suffering, of longing, of oppression, even of grief. Like the Psalms, one person’s experience can be seen as common to all as part of our shared human experience. So, using both the language of the singer and of the Psalmist, that is speaking in the first person singular, the spirituals remind us that in every facet of life “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” That very verse may sound familiar to you for many reasons, but it is worth noting that it is carved in to the choir rail in our sanctuary. So, while any one of us can make that statement for ourselves individually, using the spirituals or praying the Psalms also allows us to make this a confession of faith we share together. When we are surrounded by enemies (real and imagined); when we are faced with adversaries and false witnesses, even when mother and father betray us, as the Psalmist personalizes in Psalm 27, we can say in confidence and in trust, “The Lord is my light and my salvation!”
As would be expected, there are several versions of Give Me Jesus, and each speak of the comfort of knowing Him as Savior and companion and friend. The text we have printed in your bulletin begins, “In the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, give me Jesus. Give me Jesus. Give me Jesus. You can have all this world, give me Jesus.”
I can hear this as an expression of confidence and gratitude, that when I wake in the morning my very first thought can be that I am a child of God and that God has blessed me with a new day; that I can face the day with anticipation and expectation, with eyes and ears and heart open to where God is alive and at work, with the hope and desire that I can come alongside what He is doing. In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus!; is an expression of praise and thanksgiving.
And then, when I am alone, when I face trials or troubles, things which threaten or cause me fear or anxiety or uncertainty, I can rest secure knowing that Jesus is my sure companion even when I “walk through the valley of deep darkness”; that He “promises never to leave me or forsake me”; and that “nothing can separate me from His great love.” Holding on to promises such as these gives me an assurance and a sense of security that no-thing and no one else ever can. So, when I am alone, give me Jesus.
And when I come to die; when I finally close my eyes in the sleep of death I can do so in the sure and certain hope of resurrection to new life, abundant and eternal, which means I can live in the confidence that death does not have the last word with me, God does, and that by His raising Jesus from the dead He has made a new way for all who follow Him. So, when I come to die, give me Jesus!
Friends, this really is the great joy and comfort of the Christian life, isn’t it; to be found in Jesus Christ; to put our trust and confidence in Him as Savior and Lord; to trust in His promise that as I “follow Him, as I lay down my life and take up His cross” , as I give up the only life I have ever known in return I am being given the only life that truly is life. So, in that confidence of faith, I can say with the singer, You can have all this world, give me Jesus!
I can certainly hear the singer singing this spiritual out of the confidence and comfort of knowing Jesus; but I can also hear it being sung as a cry of the heart, as a longing for something that I do not have, a confidence I do not share.
In the morning when I rise does my mind, my heart, my affection, my attention turn immediately to Him? I confess to you, and perhaps with you, “No, it does not”. Studies have shown that upon waking the average person reaches for their phone in a matter of seconds. I don’t know where your mind races to as the fog of sleep clears, but mine often runs to all I have to do today, all that I didn’t get done yesterday or the week before; to tasks, even those gilded in religiosity, that call for my time and attention.
My wife, Kris, shared with me a section of a book she was reading a while back in which the author reflects on an exercise of “awakening slowly” to the day. She writes of lying quietly in bed for several minutes when she first comes to consciousness using that time to open her mind and her heart, perhaps even before opening her eyes, to the presence of God and the beauty of the new day with all the opportunities it holds. I loved that idea, so tried to put it in to practice, and I did, for about two days, then I was back to my old routine of jumping out of bed and getting on with the day.
So when I hear the words, in the morning when I rise, give me Jesus, I can also hear them as a word of encouragement, as a gentle reminder, as a cry of my heart. Something I long for and would do well to put in to practice.
The same is true of the verse when I am alone. It reminds me that in my times of anxiety or concern; when I am “surrounded by my adversaries or accused by my false witnesses” as the Psalmist notes; when I face disappointment or defeat, my human tendencies are to turn to creature comforts, transient though they may be, to creature comforts which for many lead to unhealthy attachments and addictions. We will talk more about those several weeks from now, but I am keenly aware that rather than turning to the One who is “my light and my salvation”, rather than “denying myself and following in the way of Jesus” I am prone to become more selfish than I am self-less, more tempted to go my own way than His way, so I hear this as a cry of the heart, When I am alone, give me Jesus!
And when I come to die what will I look to for comfort and a sense of security? If I look only to the things I have acquired or accomplished in life; only to the things which I possess (or which possess me); only to things temporal and transient which I cannot take with me; then I will surely come up empty. This is the point Jesus is making exactly when He says, “What will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their soul?” So, when I come to die, let the cry of my heart be, You can have all this world, give me Jesus, the only One who ever faced death and came out victorious!
Friends, there is a particular challenge which the spirituals pose to us that perhaps those who originally wrote and sang them, a captured and enslaved people, did not have to face. It is the challenge of luxury, of the freedom of self-determination, of having access to options and resources. When you don’t have access to the riches or opportunities that the world offers, when in fact all you have is Jesus, you realize that Jesus is sufficient, that He is your “all in all.” As Mother Theresa writes, “You’ll never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you’ve got.” For many of us however our problem, and it really is a problem in an eternal sense, is that Jesus is NOT all we’ve got! We’ve got a lot more than Jesus, or so we think. So, when we rise we face a world of opportunity; when we feel alone all we need do is ask Alexa to turn on the music while we surf the net and drown out the sounds of silence; and when we come to die we figure we’ll just ask someone to keep us comfortable in the hope that we won’t have to be there when it happens.
Henri Nouwen reflects on this notion when he writes, “Am I afraid to die? I
am every time I let myself be seduced by the noisy voices of my world telling me that my ‘little life’ is all I have and advising me to cling to it with all my might. But when I let those voices move to the background of my life and listen to that still small voice calling me the Beloved, I know there is nothing to fear and that dying is the greatest act of love, the act that leads me into the eternal embrace of my God whose love is ever-lasting.”
Can you see how all these “things” which we call benefits, even blessings,
might be the very things which keep us from “letting go so that we may be embraced”, the very things that keep us from “denying ourselves so that we might follow Him?”
In no way am I glamorizing poverty much less the brutality of slavery, but I am suggesting that it is much easier to come to the realization that Jesus is all you need when Jesus is all you’ve got. All of these other things with which we surround ourselves and look to for comfort and security may be nothing more than stumbling blocks and obstacles that keep us from getting to Jesus!
Missionary Jim Elliot wrote in his diary, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose.” Recall Elliot and his four missionary companions were murdered by the very Auca Indians in Ecuador to whom they had gone to share the love of Jesus.
So, how do you hear this spiritual? As a song of comfort or as a cry of the heart? Perhaps the answer for you, as it is for me, is “yes, both”. For me it is an expression of how I want to live my life and it expresses it as well, as simply and as beautifully, as anything I have ever found.
In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus. I want to live my life knowing that I am a child of God with my eyes and ears and heart open to what God is doing in me, around me and through me. I want to live my life for Him. So you can have all this world, give me Jesus.
When I am alone, give me Jesus. As I mature in life and in faith, I want to grow less and less dependent on myself and my own self-interest and become more and more committed to Him and to His. I want to turn down the noise around me, so that I can listen more intently to the voice of the One who is within me. You can have all this world, give me Jesus.
And when I come to die, give me Jesus. I want to live my life with the full, unblinking acknowledgement that death is a reality; it is something that one day I will have to face; there is no avoiding it, so there is no denying it. And I want to do so in the full confidence of faith that I will not have to face it alone, that the One who went before me will also walk beside me and lead me safely to the other side. You can have all this world, give me Jesus.
In every aspect and in every season of my life: in the morning when I rise; when I am alone and when I come die, give me Jesus. You can all this world, give me Jesus. Amen.