I delievered this sermon on June 16, 2024 at Danville (CA) Congregational Church UCC, Fourth Sunday After Pentecost. Special musical guest was Minister Elana Bolds, Visions of Hope Ministries, Richmond, CA.
General Orders, No. 3
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, becomes that between employer and hired labor. The Freedmen are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
By order of Major-General Granger[1]
We organize ourselves this morning around the celebration that erupted by a community of enslaved people in 1865—a quarter-of-a-million people[2]—once they finally received the news everyone else in the nation had already received:
They were free.
FREE.
Liberty achieved.
But it was an incomplete liberty.
And a liberty that continues to be threatened.
As we’ve talked about many times before, Jesus lived during a time when he and his people were occupied by the empire of Rome. Like a boot on their necks, Rome’s rule was cruel and oppressive.
Jesus’ family and community dwelled in this oppression—surveilled everywhere they went… taxed beyond what they could afford…restricted in movement and political expression.
Jesus grew up in this culture. Came of age in this culture. Worked as a laborer in this culture. Like his ancestors who were enslaved by the Egyptians, Jesus knew what it was like to be othered by a ruling power that considered him and his people as less-than, as inferior,
as second-class citizens, as not fully deserving of equality.
Jesus would participate in each Passover meal remembering the liberation of his people from bondage.
It was this context that formed Jesus…that shaped his understanding of himself as liberator.
Bob reminded us a few weeks ago of Jesus words [as recorded by Luke],
quoting the prophet Isaiah:
“God has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed…”[3]
According to Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, these words are
“a proclamation that explains the fundamentally liberatory character of God and God’s promises.”[4]
It is remarkable to me—horrifying, in fact—that in a nation developed under the banner of
“liberty and justice for all” and informed by a citizenry who would have known these words
of Jesus—[that they] could ignore Jesus’ own self-proclaimed mission statement of liberation. That people defiantly ignored these words and willfully refused to release those they enslaved. I cannot comprehend it.
I cannot imagine receiving this freedom but realizing the proclamation had an asterisk: “Complete equality,” it said, but with restrictions. Still have to work for the slave owners. Can’t congregate. And absolutely no idleness.
I cannot comprehend the deep mourning that those enslaved must have felt.
Or the experience of the psalmist who lamented their peoples’ times of “distress an anguish.”[5]
Or those whose ancestors were enslaved, “cheated of their lives and livelihood by oppressors.”[6]
NOR can I imagine the resulting JUBILATION as those newly liberated
experienced the news of their freedom, the sting of slavery swallowed up in victory.
Thank goodness that’s over. Right?
Sadly, we all know—though most of us don’t experience it—oppression endures.
I grew up in Texas in the 70s and 80s and hardly knew of Juneteenth. And if I did hear about it, it was spoken of by white people in a derogatory manner. Even through to the time I left Texas in the mid-twenty-tens, Juneteenth was not a milestone that white people observed.
If anything, the view was this was their day—why would “we” celebrate it.
Rev. Taylor posits,
“Through [Jesus’] proclamation, we can see our own nation’s struggle to uphold equal rights for all as achieving the liberation that God so clearly wants for all God’s people. This is what our forebears saw in the Civil Rights Movement: By seeking equal justice for the descendants of those who had been brought here as chattel slaves, we [as disciples of Jesus the liberator,] bring this world closer, bit by bit, to the kingdom of God.[7]
Who’s familiar with Fannie Lou Hamer?
The last of twenty children born to Black sharecroppers in rural Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer became a civil rights leader in the 1960s. As sharecroppers, she and her family worked
land they did not own and were forced to pay for their housing, food, and even their seeds
with a share of their crops. Through civil disobedience, community organizing, and repeated attempts to register to vote, she helped draw attention to the violent white supremacy that ruled Southern communities. Fannie Lou was beaten, threatened, forced to flee her home,
shot at, and repeatedly arrested for her activism.[8]
It was amid this oppressive life experience that she reminded anyone
who would hear her voice:
“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
Fannie Lou knew what those freed from the sting of slavery before those in Texas got word:
an incomplete, delayed freedom is not “liberty and justice for all.”
What Jesus himself proclaimed through his life and his death:
That those of us who enjoy freedom, who have tasted its sweetness,
have a responsibility to make that freedom accessible those longing for its taste.
Despite the proclamation that ended slavery six generations ago, I think most of us perceive that forms of slavery endure to this day.
Through Jim Crow, “separate but equal,” and our carceral system, all the way to present-day laws across the country that restrict access to reproductive care, to gender-affirming care and expression,
to historically and scientifically accurate education[9], evento book choices and bathroom usage:
liberty and freedom have been commodified, restricted,
desperately sought-after by those denied the protection and dignity they offer.
Collectively, the majority of us[10] experience the apex of freedom.
Think about your own experience. Do you have…
an amount of security to live where you want, and safely.
freedom of movement and self-expression.
access to education and healthy food.
the ability to participate in open and free elections.
So we may wonder, as present-day disciples of Jesus—what our role is.
Simply put: as those called to bring about God’s realm of love in our lifetimes, we are to be “chain-breakers,”…to confront any and every system that prevents any person from accessing liberation, from living into the freedom ordained by God for them to experience.
We who have been liberated generally—and particularly those who experience the kind of freedom in Christ talked about in Christian scriptures—we must remember the words of modern-day prophet Maya Angelou, echoing Fannie Lou Hamer’s cry:
The truth is,
no one of us can be free until everybody is free.[11]
Juneteenth marks our country’s second independence day.
It is a time of sacred lament and of jubilant celebration. The oldest celebration on this continent that centers the experience of those descended from the sin of slavery and now designated a federal holiday, Juneteenth reminds all those who enjoy the fullness of liberty to pause—to give thanks, and then look around and see who’s not free.
For indeed, freedom has not come to everyone.
“Juneteenth,” says Mary Elliott, Curator of American Slavery for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, “should really be a rallying call for all of us to think about the meaning of freedom, particularly regarding African Americans,
as well as to the nation and the rest of the world.”[12]
Again, Rev. Taylor:
“The work of bringing about God’s kingdom “on earth as its in heaven”
is not a straight line, and it won’t be finished until the day Jesus returns.”[13]
So we, as disciples of Jesus the chain-breaker, must ascribe to the spirit and vision of Juneteenth. For it is a reminder that “never growing weary of doing good and pushing tirelessly for justice can in fact move mountains and change history. Now it is our turn to keep pushing.”[14]
Beloveds of the God of freedom, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of liberation,
because with God, our labor is not in vain![15]
It’s been a long
A long time coming, but I know
A change gon’ come.[16]
May that change come everywhere, and to everyone, in our country as God’s realm of Love grows ever closer. .
And so it is. Amen.
[1] https://jackmillercenter.org/emancipation-proclamation-juneteenth-holiday/#full-text-of-the-emancipation-proclamation.
[2] https://www.stpetersburg.usf.edu/news/2023/juneteenth-complicated-history-significance-celebration-around-struggle-for-freedom.aspx#:~:text=Dating%20back%20to%201865%2C%20Juneteenth,free%20by%20the%20U.S.%20Army.
[4] Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, Why Civil Rights Anniversaries Should Matter to Christians, Sojourners.com, June 13, 2024, https://sojo.net/articles/why-civil-rights-anniversaries-should-matter-christians.
[5] Psalm 116, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+116&version=NRSVUE.
[6] Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson, A Prayer of Thanksgiving for Juneteenth, Living Psalms Book, https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/living-psalm-1161-4-12-19-pentecost-3a-juneteenth/.
[7] Taylor.
[8] https://study.com/learn/lesson/fannie-lou-hamer-quotes-biography-facts.html.
[9] Since January 2021, 44 states have introduced bills or taken steps that would limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to an analysis by Education Week.
[10] Our church is located in Danville, CA, located in one of the wealthiest counties in California. The congregation is made up of mostly white, upper-middle class people.
[11] Maya Angelou, CNN, August 28, 2013. https://youtu.be/UxkTd6BFL1o?si=l2crAxcohQ9MRVhS.
[12] Why is Juneteenth Important? Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/why-juneteenth-important.
[13] Taylor.
[14] Taylor.
[16] Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come, 1963.
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