Wade In the Water

Wade in the water
Wade in the water, children
Wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water

This is a song that I grew up with. I do not know when or where I first heard the song – I suppose it was sometime in the 1960s at Emmanuel Temple in Buffalo, New York. That being what it might be, it seems like I have always known the song…all my life.

I feel like this song is one of the songs that links me – us – most closely to our ancestors. I know they sang this song. I know they moaned on the melody. I know they cried and called out their best wishes in the verses. I am sure they had this hope burning in their hearts – 

God’s gonna trouble the water

It is one of those call and response songs with what I think are called, “wandering couplets,” (or is it a “wandering quatrain – perhaps our resident poet could enlighten us on that point) that are sung as both verse and coded message in many contexts across our culture.

I look over Jordan and what did I see
God’s gonna trouble the water
A band of angels coming after me
God’s gonna trouble the water

You can hear the ancestors’ voices in Pops Staple. Now an ancestor, himself, he was a 20th Century bridge between us and all the Old Folks. His moanin’. His guitar. His humble, yet sure stance. Pops embodied the message and gave the message, as the Christ would have it given, along with his children to the world –

By and by
You will be healed
Just wait
God’s gonna trouble the water

I imagine that somewhere, somehow this song comes from the account of John of healing at the pool

Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.

When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?

The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.

This is God’s prayer-song-message for you today, for this Sabbath. From me. From Pops. From Emmanuel Temple. From the Old Folks. From John. From Jesus. Just wait. Wade. Wade in the water. You will be healed. God’s gonna trouble the water.