A Juneteentheology--June 19, 2020
"For since death cam through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ." [1 Corinthians 15:21-22]
I am thankful for today--more and more thankful, in fact, each year when it comes around on the calendar. In addition to what Juneteenth means to our national history, and in particular to the descendants of formerly enslaved people here, this day and its story have helped to deepen my theology and to awaken my faith--moreso, I dare say, than any other holiday or observance on the secular calendar that's not first and foremost already a sacred observance. That is to say, over the last eighteen or twenty years since I first learned about (not in school or even in college, mind you), in addition to better understanding our nation's history because of this day and its story, I have also come to understand the Gospel better because of Juneteenth.
Even a short summary version of that story is compelling. Most of us learn in school at some point that Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and in that edict declared all enslaved persons held in the treasonous Confederate states to be set free. (Now, that by itself needs a bit of clarification: Lincoln's proclamation did not liberate slaves held in states that remained in the Union, like Kentucky or Maryland. You could argue that this indicated the direction of the trend of things, but for Lincoln this was a move first and foremost about trying to weaken the power of the states that had seceded from the Union and to bolster the cause of the Union with a moral urgency.) In any case, many slaveholders in the Confederacy simply refused to comply, or moved west to places like Texas, where there would be even less chance for the Union to enforce the Proclamation. So even though Lincoln's decree was made at the very start of the year 1863, it wasn't until June 19, 1865--a full two and a half years later--that news of the liberation finally reached Texas. There, in Galveston, Major General Gordon Granger made the announcement that those who had been held in slavery had been--already--set free. Now, mind you, this was not only two and a half years after Lincoln's declaration, but it was even more than a month after the surrender of the traitorous Confederacy at Appomattox in May of 1865!
At one level, I am just fascinated by the sheer historical impact of that story. We who live in an age of instant communication, where a word can be said and the communicated around the world in a matter of moments, we forget that for most of human history, there were delays in messaging, even in world-shaping, life-changing news like the liberation of the enslaved. And at another level, just from a historical point of view, this day speaks both of deep joy for those who were freed from chattel slavery and also the deep and tragic injustice that even in being set free, there were delays and hold-ups and stalling tactics at work by those who wanted to keep others, made in the image of God, enslaved and owned as property. To celebrate liberation, after all, requires the acknowledgement that there was a need for it in the first place, much as the celebration of resurrection requires the acknowledgement of the injustice and sorrow of the cross and the grave. Even just at the level of the purely historical, I am grateful as an American for the story and observance of Juneteenth, because it continues to make me think more deeply about how long-lasting and persistent the powers of evil are, and how they insist on holding people in its greedy clutches for as long as they can.
But something else happened for me on that day, a little less than two decades ago, when I first learned the story of Juneteenth. And even though the previous generations on my family tree are about as white as they come, tracing back to England and Germany for as far back as anyone has record, I have come to see something essential in the Juneteenth story that makes me see it as vital good news for all of us, regardless of where our ancestors came from or the color of our skin. And that learning, for me, is just as voices like Dr. King and Emma Lazarus each famously put it: "No one is free until we are all free." The story of Juneteenth has made me see that the Gospel itself is not just individual good news, but it is about God's work to set all people free, to rescue all humanity from the power of death, and to bring resurrection and restoration for all of creation.
That's essential for us to be clear about, because so much of popular religion in our consumeristic culture is peddled as an individual product for single-serving consumption. In our day, most of us have been bombarded with messaging from the Respectable Religious voices around us that says the Gospel is pre-packaged for individual consumption. It starts with Jesus' resurrection--good news for Jesus, right?--and then God just makes the offer to us as individual consumers to accept the "deal" God is offering, and if you are lucky enough to live in a place where it is offered to you easily (like near a church), good for you. And if not, well, hey, there's nothing that can be done about it. Some version of that is how a lot of us heard the Christian faith growing up--that it offers salvation a single-serving commodity, and that you can be free from death and sin and the powers of evil, while having no obligation or connection whatsoever to the people near you. You and your relationship with God is a separate transaction from anybody else, and your choice to accept the "deal" is all that the transaction requires--there's no connection to helping bring life to others around you, because, you know, "that's their problem."
But the story of Juneteenth helps me to see what was so evident even to the apostle Paul in the New Testament itself: we are all connected, one to another, so that God's work of redemption and resurrection isn't done with Jesus alone, but always pushes toward reaching everyone. That means my freedom isn't complete until and unless all are free. My hope of life in Christ is never just a single-serving--it is part of the great sweeping movement of God to bring life to all. And much like freedom for the enslaved peoples in the Confederacy wasn't "done" until the word actually reached the last of the holdout plantation owners in the last pockets of resistance to that liberation, God didn't stop working to bring new life once Easter Sunday was done. The resurrection of Jesus, like the Emancipation Proclamation, announces God's declaration to set free all humanity from the powers of sin and death--but that work is still happening, as the power and presence of the Spirit works to bring all people to freedom, all people to release from the power of death, and all people to newness of life.
Without the story of this day on the calendar, I was well on the way to just uncritically regurgitating the consumeristic gospel of single-serving portions of "salvation" that had been pitched to me in pop religion from my infancy, the same bad deal-making theology that's been popular in our culture for a couple of centuries. But the story of Juneteenth opened my eyes to see what was already there in the Scriptures, but which I had not been able to see: that God's work of redemption is always corporate--for all creation, all peoples, all nations, tribes, and tongues--and that God's work isn't done with Easter, but is just getting going. My freedom in Christ isn't full until all are free in Christ, and my ability to have life in the full is not accomplished until all experience that abundant life. And I don't have permission to shrug off the needs of my neighbor just because I think, "Well, that's their problem--my needs are already met, because I already know Jesus." Just the opposite: if I am convinced that Jesus has made a difference in my life, then I am compelled to work for letting all people have fullness and abundance of life around me.
And maybe there is one other really important thing I need to keep learning in my faith because of the story of Juneteenth: it's not all about me. God doesn't rest with just bringing me to life and faith in hope, but God keeps reaching out, seeking, saving, restoring, and redeeming all people. I can rejoice over the way God is at work for good in others' lives, even if that doesn't directly benefit me, because I get it: it's not all about me. I'm not the center, and I'm not the end-goal for God's work of restoration. I am a part of it, but God doesn't stop just because I have now come to faith. And similarly, I don't get to say, "Well, my life and my immediate interests are covered, so I guess I don't have to care about anybody else." No, my neighbor's well-being and mine are intertwined. The Gospel was already telling me so--that is my hope, in fact!--but it is all-too-easy to ignore that reality if all we are listening to are the sale-pitches of consumeristic individualist religion that calls itself Christianity.
My well-being is caught up in the well-being of all.
My life is entwined with Christ's resurrection--and with God's work for "all" to be "made alive in Christ."
And none of us are fully free... until all of us are free.
Thanks be to the God who keeps freeing the enslaved--from Pharaoh' Egypt to Galveston, Texas, to the enduring power and presence of evil even today.
Lord Jesus, keep widening my vision as you keep making all people free and restoring all creation to new life.
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