HOPE 365 Toolbox - Weekly Devotion - Go Tell it on the Mountain

Go Tell it on the Mountain

By Pastor Roger Sylwester

I had two tasks this week. One was to choose a scene for our Christmas card and the other was to choose a carol or hymn for this devotion. I chose my painting of Mt. Baker, the very tip of which I can see from our apartment. This led me to the carol “Go Tell It on the Mountain!” In watercolor painting you start with white paper and look for what is not light. So, I painted six shadow shades, a sky shape, and added some brush strokes. It only took me ten years to do it in thirty minutes!

Our life is much more challenging. We begin each day with our baptismal identity and go forth into our world that tries to convince us it has the word or product that will “enlighten” us. Each year Advent proclaims that in the midst of all our activities the true light has come, is coming and will come. Our calling is to “Go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ has come.”

This carol comes out of the African American tradition. It originally began with the spiritual:

When I was a seeker
I sought both night and day,
I asked the Lord to help me,
And he showed me the way.

The present three stanzas were written by John Wesley Work, Jr., a descendant of an ex-slave, and published in a book of Songs and Spirituals in 1940. He was born in 1871, studied a year at Harvard after graduating from college, and spent his life preserving, collecting, and publishing several collections of slave songs and spirituals. In 1909, the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, of which he was a leader, travelled widely and even made recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company.

“Go Tell It on the Mountain” is the response to each of the stanzas. The first stanza begins “While shepherds kept their watch” and each stanza tells part of the Christmas story, as found in the Gospel of St. Luke. Luke also tells us that “When the shepherds saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them” The shepherds were the first to sing this song, as they returned to their fields and their flocks!

The melody we use is closely related to the spiritual “We’ll March around Jerusalem” (published in 1868), and the tune is similar to others. Try the first line of “Oh Susanna” or “Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are marching.” I’m showing my age!

As a Christmas Carol, this is a relatively recent (1940) carol, but it has become one of the most loved. Sing it from your mountain top!