Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [100]
And a voice, for the first time in all his terrible journey, spoke to John, through he rage and weeping, and fire, and darkness, and flood:
‘Yes,’ said the voice, ‘go through. Go through.’
‘Lift me up,’ whispered John, ‘lift me up. I can’t go through.’
‘Go through,’ said the voice, ‘go through.’
Then there was silence. The murmuring ceased. There was only this trebling beneath him. And he knew there was a light somewhere.
‘Go through.’
‘Ask Him to take you through.’
But he could never go through this darkness, through this fire and this wrath. He never could go through. His strength was finished, and he could not move. He belonged to the darkness—the darkness from which he had thought to flee had claimed him. And he moaned again, weeping, and lifted up his hands.
‘Call on Him. Call on Him.’
‘Ask Him to take you through.’
Dust rose again in his nostrils, sharp as the fumes of Hell. And he turned again in the darkness, trying to remember something he had heard, something he had read.
Jesus saves.
And he saw before him the fire, red and gold, and waiting for him—yellow, and red, and gold, and burning in a night eternal, and waiting for him. He must go through this fire, and into this night.
Jesus saves.
Call on Him.
Ask Him to take you through.
He could not call, for his tongue would not unlock, and his heart was silent, and great with fear. In the darkness, how to move?—with death’s ten thousand jaws agape, and waiting in the darkness. On any turning whatsoever the beast may spring—to move in the darkness is to move into the moving jaws of death. And yet, it came to him that he must move; for there was a light somewhere, and life, and joy, and singing—somewhere, somewhere above him.
And he moaned again: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy. Have mercy, Lord.’
There came to him again the communion service at which Elisha had knelt at his father’s feet. Now this service was in a great, high room, a room made golden by the light of the sun; and the room was filled with a multitude of people, all in long, white robes, the women with covered heads. They sat at a long, bare, wooden table. They broke at this table flat, unsalted bread, which was the body of the Lord, and drank from a heavy silver cup the scarlet wine of His blood. Then he saw that they were barefoot, and that their feet were stained with this same blood. And a sound of weeping filled the room as they broke the bread and drank the wine.
Then they rose, to come together over a great basin filled with water. And they divided into four groups, two of women, and man before man, to watch each other’s feet. But the blood would not wash off; many washings only turned the crystal water red; and someone cried: ‘Have you been to the river?’
Then John saw the river, and the multitude was there. And now they had undergone a change; their robes were ragged, and stained with the road they had traveled, and stained with unholy blood; the robes of some barely covered their nakedness; and some indeed were naked. And some stumbled on the smooth stones at the river’s edge, for they were blind; and some crawled with a terrible wailing, for they were lame; some did not cease to pluck at their flesh, which was rotten with running sores. All struggled to get to the river, in a dreadful hardness of heart: the strong struck down the weak, the ragged spat on the naked, the naked cursed the blind, the blind crawled over the lame. And someone cried: ‘Sinner, do you love my Lord?’
Then John saw the Lord—for a moment only; and the darkness, for a moment only, was filled with a light he could not bear. Then, in a moment, he was set free; his tears sprang as from a fountain; his heart, like a fountain of waters, burst. Then he cried: ‘Oh, blessed Jesus! Oh, Lord Jesus! Take me through!’
Of tears there was, yes, a very fountain—springing from a depth never sounded before, from depths John had not known were in him. And he wanted to rise up, singing, singing in that great morning, the morning of his new life. Ah, how