“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say
you have faith but do not have works?”
Today is the feast day of Harriet Tubman, one of my
all-time heroines. Today I am going to tell you her story and then touch upon the
lessons appointed for her day.
In 1834, she was a village store with the plantation cook when an overseer entered, pursuing an escaped slave. The overseer ordered Araminta to assist with tying the man up, which she refused to do. As the escaping slave bolted for the door, the overseer swept up a two-pound scale weight up from the counter and threw it after him. The weight missed its mark, hitting Araminta instead, knocking her unconscious. While this was not her first experience with the violence of slavery, it would have the most lasting effect as she suffered from severe headaches for the rest of her life.
Araminta married a free Black man named John Tubman in
1844, taking his last name. She changed her first name, adopting her mother's
name, becoming Harriet. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of choosing
how one is known. It is always an act of self-empowerment and an act of
resistance. We hear this today in our own cultural struggles over gender and
the pronouns we use to describe ourselves.
In 1849, worried that she and the other slaves on the plantation where she lived were going to be sold, Harriet decided to run away. Her husband refused to go with her, so she set out with her two brothers, both of whom would turn back. Tubman persevered to freedom, settling in Philadelphia. But she could not be happy knowing that her relatives and friends remained enslaved. That was when she would make the first of many dangerous return forays to the South to secure their freedom as well.
On Christmas Day 1854, Tubman returned to nearby Poplar Neck to lead her three brothers to freedom as well as several others. They hid in a corn crib until dark, when they could begin their journey north. At nightfall, Harriet safely led them on their journey towards freedom, traveling through Delaware, Pennsylvania, and across upstate New York to St. Catharine’s, Ontario, Canada.
Knowledge of the terrain was vital to survival while hiding and trying to flee. Tubman and others had to successfully navigate the land and waterways, trap and forage for food, and hide from their pursuers. Understanding the tides, knowing how to find food and fresh water, and following the North Star were all skills that later proved vital as she guided her charges north along the Underground Railroad to freedom.
This reference to the stars is important. In 2021, the Mennello Folk Art Gallery in Orlando featured an exhibit by photographer Jeanine Michna-Bales entitled “Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad.” The photographs showed many of the locations along the mid 19th CE path that runaway enslaved persons took seeking freedom. The photographs were difficult to make out. They’d all been taken at night.
I began to become irritated with the artist over my
inability to fully see the images when suddenly it dawned on me that these photos had been
taken at night purposely. That was the only time people of color could move
across the region without being seen and recaptured. This was what they saw. It
was a painful lesson in white privilege for me. Undercover movement at night was
something neither I nor my ancestors would ever have had to worry about.
As part of the Underground Railroad network, Tubman successfully employed a variety of escape and evasion methods to help aid fleeing slaves. Disguise was a favorite. When word was out that a group of male slaves had bolted from a plantation, she dressed the fugitives as women for the trip north. For one of her more brazen missions, she convinced a light-skinned fugitive to pose as a white master transporting a group of slaves to a town further up the road.
Tubman also served as a spy, seeking and delivering
intelligence from behind enemy lines. At the war's conclusion, she was granted
a military pension of $20 per month, the first African American woman to
receive one.
After the war, Tubman retired to a piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York where she lived surrounded by family. She cared for her parents and other relatives, becoming a stalwart of the community. Tubman died in 1913 and was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York. In April 2016, the US Treasury announced that she would become the first American woman pictured on currency in over 100 years, taking her place in history on the new twenty dollar bill. For the record, the date of that bill’s issue has continued to be pushed back by the U.S. Treasury Department and now is scheduled for 2030.
It does my heart good to know that the Episcopal Church has
chosen to include Harriet Tubman on their calendar of Holy Women, Holy Men.
The lectionary chosen for this day reflects both her own courageous service of
G-d and the good Creation as well as our own vocations to do the same.
In 2022 I visited Tubman’s grave. It had become an impromptu shrine, covered with drawings and messages from children nearly two centuries removed from this heroine expressing their admiration and gratitude. I smiled when I noticed her grave stone was covered with pennies bearing the image of a fellow emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, turned face up. The words of the psalm appointed for this day rang out from the graveside:
Let this be written for a
future generation, so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord. For the
Lord looked down from his holy place on high; from the heavens he beheld the
earth; That he might hear the groan of the captive and set free those condemned
to die;
But our lectionary offers us more than mere praise for an
American heroine. It also reminds us of our own vocations as followers of Jesus.
Richard Rohr often speaks of the twin prongs of a Franciscan life as an ever alternating movement between Action and Contemplation. It is essential that we find our grounding in spiritual community, like the one in which we are gathered today. We need space and time set aside to reflect upon our actions and to hear from one another. That is important both for a solidarity that assures us we are not alone as well as the critical challenge for our understandings that seem clear to us even as our blind spots are just as clear to others.
Indeed.
O God, whose Spirit guides us into all truth and makes us free: Strengthen and sustain us as you did your servant Harriet Ross Tubman. Give us vision and courage to stand against oppression and injustice and all that works against the glorious liberty to which you call all your children; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Angela Yarber, “Harriet Tubman” (2016)
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living,
surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth
holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
Those who believe religion and politics
aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d require of you but to do
justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your
G-d? - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's
grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated
to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi
Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2025
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