Ashley Jones wrote a poem about Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings? Ashley Jones says, “It’s safe to say I’ve always been fascinated by the ways that history is taught in America.” And she goes on,
Let us tell it, 1492 was a year of great discovery and exploration instead of the start of mass genocide and pillaging. Slaves and masters were happy together. The Emancipation Proclamation marked the end of second-class citizenship for Black people in America. We know these things aren’t true, that history is painted over to make us seem more heroic, more loving, more okay with the way things are.
Ashley Jones wrote a poem about Sally Hemings because she’s “interested […] in the discrepancies between the story in our history and the reality of what happened.” She says,
Some people will tell us that Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, lover, girlfriend, etc., but none of that is possible because she was a slave. She could not give consent, and in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of her master, she wasn’t human enough to feel such a complex feeling as love. [...] Thomas Jefferson didn’t think of Sally, of any Black person as a full human being. In [Notes on the State of Virginia], Jefferson asserts his belief that Black people are scientifically inferior to White people for many reasons, but some of note are that we are smellier (more sweat), require less sleep, are incapable of complex cognition, and we are unable to feel love, only lust.
Ashley Jones wrote a poem about Sally Hemings because she’s interested in the discrepancies between the story in our history and the reality of what happened. She’s interested in the discrepancies between the story in our unquestioned assumptions, our comfortable assumptions, our oft-repeated assumptions and the reality of what happened. “As the poem developed,” she says, “I realized I wanted the facts to stand alone so the reader could draw her own conclusions. I didn’t want to moralize, as Sally’s voice has been silenced enough—I wanted her life to exist on the page so everyone could see who she was and what was done to her. I wanted her to finally get to tell her truth.”[1]
Ashley M. Jones, What It Means To Say Sally Hemings
Bright Girl Sally
Mulatto Sally
Well Dressed Sally
Sally With the Pretty Hair
Sally With the Irish Cotton Dress
Sally With the Smallpox Vaccine
Sally, Smelling of Clean White Soap
Sally Never Farmed A Day In Her Life
Available Sally
Nursemaid Sally
Sally, Filled with Milk
Sally Gone to Paris with Master’s Daughter
Sally in the Chamber with the President
Sally in the Chamber with the President’s Brother
Illiterate Sally
Capable Sally
Unmarried Sally
Sally, Mother of Madison, Harriet, Beverly, Eston
Sally, Mother of Eston Who Changed His Name
Sally, Mother of Eston Hemings Jefferson
Eston, Who Made Cabinets
Eston, Who Made Music
Eston, Who Moved to Wisconsin
Eston, Whose Children Were Jeffersons
Eston, Who Died A White Man
Grandmother Sally of the White Hemingses
Infamous Sally
Silent Sally
Sally, Kept at Monticello Until Jefferson’s Death
Sally, Whose Children Were Freed Without Her
Jesus seems uncomfortably comfortable talking about slaves, not as persons with names, persons with their own stories, but as nameless characters in his parables. “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?” he says, and the expected answer is, “No one; it would be unthinkable.”
According to Luke, Jesus told this story to the apostles — are we to assume then that there actually were owners of slaves among the first followers of Jesus? Or was this question just another conventional way to begin a story? Like, “In a certain city there was judge” or “there was a rich man who had a manager”?
The question may have been just another conventional way to begin a story, given that slavery was a painfully common institution in the first century and beyond. The word slave occurs more than 150 times in the Greek New Testament,[2] and our hearts are heavy with grief and shame and anger, because we know how this frequent occurrence was used for centuries as a convenient cover to justify chattel slavery in this country.
The stories of masters and slaves, or slaves and fellow slaves, presuppose the institution of slavery as it existed in the first century; and the writers of the New Testament appear to have largely accepted it as a given of the social order. Explicitly the institution wasn’t questioned until later, but Jesus’ teaching, together with the unsettling reality of his dying a slave’s death on the cross and his being raised by God on the third day, undermined the whole structure of divisions between Jews and Gentiles, free citizens and slaves, male and female, and the old world began to crumble, and a new one began to emerge.
All of creation was radically renewed with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the pouring out of God’s Spirit on all flesh—but the wave of reconciliation unleashed by God’s act of new creation did not spread at the speed of an imperial army; it spread at the speed of trust: one gesture of brave hospitality at a time, one faithful act of service, one small step toward wholeness at a time.
The story that begins with the question about your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field is Jesus’ response to the apostles’ request to increase their faith. Why increase it? Are they looking for more, bigger, better, faster faith? New and improved faith? This year’s model of faith? In the preceding verses, Jesus teaches the disciples about repentance and forgiveness. “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive,” he says. And then he adds, “And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent’, you must forgive.”
Rebuking the offender? Not a problem. Forgiving if there is repentance? Perhaps you could say a bit more what true repentance looks like… But seven times? Increase our faith.
They’re like most of us. They don’t think they have quite enough of what it takes to be forgiving like that. They don’t think they’re ready for what they perceive to be the major leagues of Christian living. And Jesus tells them in so many words that they have all the faith they need for one small step toward wholeness and then another; for one gesture of courageous hospitality that lets the stranger in, and then another; all the faith we need to look at our history and at each other and let go of one comfortable assumption, and then another, and begin to know what it means to say Sally Hemings and Uncle Nearest[3] and David Drake[4] and Abraham.[5]
In Jesus’ story the assumption is presented that the slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field doesn’t get to eat and drink until he has prepared supper for his master, put on his apron and served his master while he eats and drinks.
“Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?” Jesus asks, and again the expected answer is negative, “No, such a thing would be unthinkable.” Up to this point, the apostles and all of us who have followed Jesus’ story, have been encouraged to identify with the master, regardless of whether we did so comfortably or not. But now Jesus flips the scene, something he likes to do a lot.
“So you also,” he says, “when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We servants deserve no special praise. We have only done our duty.’” Forgiving a person seven times a day is nothing extraordinary like hitting sixty-one home runs; it’s as everyday as it is for a slave to plow, tend sheep, prepare food, or serve at the table. Forgiving, offering hospitality by making space for others and letting them in by listening to them, entertaining their thoughts, eating their food and offering ours, letting go of comfortable assumptions—all these actions are simply things we do because we follow and obey Jesus.
And because it is Jesus we follow, there’s one more twist. In a later scene, where the disciples are busy debating which one of them ought to be regarded as the greatest, Jesus asks them, “Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table?” All heads nodding. Some still quietly composing seating charts for the great banquet. And Jesus adds, “But I am among you as one who serves.”
We know he likes to flip the scene. In chapter 12 of Luke, we hear him say, “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes.” Here the master is the one who comes in, not the slave. We wonder what the master will tell the slaves. We wonder who will sit at table and who will put on the apron. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” The master is the servant, and the slaves are the guests of honor. And we are only beginning to know what it means to say Jesus is Lord.
[1][1] From Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2017); all author’s quotes and the poem at https://poetrysociety.org/poems-essays/in-their-own-words/ashley-m-jones-on-what-it-means-to-say-sally-hemings
[2] According to https://biblehub.com/greek/1401.htm, the word group δοῦλ- is used more than 150 times. In English translations, the word slave is used 130 times in the New Testament, 31 times in Luke alone, if you read the version we read in worship, the New Revised Standard Version. Other editions, including the King James Version and the New International Version prefer the translation “servant.”
[3] https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/industries/2022/06/22/uncle-nearest-whiskey-preserving-historic-legacy/7610307001/
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/arts/design/-enslaved-potter-david-drake-museum.html
[5] http://truthsofthetrade.winterthur.org/silver-spoon/