In this Sunday’s newsletter, our featured blogger is Rev. June Cooper, who is an alum of the UB Sankofa Cohort and Theologian in the City at Old South Church. Rev. June Cooper offers a stirring reflection on the legacy of freedom and the unfinished work of justice in our nation, based on a Juneteenth sermon she preached at Old South Church. Drawing from scripture, history, and present-day challenges, she invites us to remember, rejoice, and recommit towards God’s vision for justice and liberation for all people.
P.S. Special thank you to the Boston Faith and Justice Network for sharing this moving reflection with us!
Juneteenth is upon us! And boy, do we need it now!
This Juneteenth marks the 160th anniversary of the day Union Major General Gordon Granger led soldiers to Galveston, Texas to proclaim that the enslaved people in that state were now free. After the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, and the official end of the Civil War on May 26, 1865, Confederate states, including Texas, had been attempting to keep hold of their slaves for as long as possible. Many of the slaves had not been informed that they had been freed or that the Confederacy had lost the war. Union soldiers were then sent to physically go to each of the Confederate states to inform everyone that enslaved people had been freed. June 19th, or Juneteenth, was the day that Major Granger and his soldiers made it to Texas, the last Confederate state on their tour, to declare that the Emancipation Proclamation would be enforced, whether Texas slaveholders were ready for it or not. Rest assured that the “enslaved individuals” did not receive a check for their back pay. They were freed with just the clothes on their backs!
Phillis Wheatley, the first published African American poet, and member of the Old South Church Meeting House, and now our Patron Saint at Old South Church in Boston, wrote these words in 1774, “in every human Breast God has implanted a Principle which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance, and the same Principle lives in us.” For those who had been denied freedom it finally came. For the nearly 250,000 enslaved people, they realized that their cries and prayers for liberation had indeed been heard.
Free at last!
In a perfect world we might be able to say that slavery and oppression ended on Juneteenth. But that is not the case. Brian Stevenson, founder and curator of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, highlights and documents that slavery evolved rather than ended in 1865. Yet, even in the face of attempts to keep black people enslaved through systems of oppression, the black community continues to rise with grace and dignity- from championing civil rights advances that we all enjoy today, to the integrating of the Boston Public Schools in 1974 to exposing police brutality through the Black Lives Matter Movement. The black community continues to forge a path forward achieving momentous gains and achievements. A little over 142 years after the first Juneteenth, American elected its first black president who asked us to choose, “hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”
This year Juneteenth comes at a painful time in the history of our country as the devolution of democracy is at hand. Across this nation there are efforts to forget those achievements. Our government has escalated its efforts to erase Black history from public institutions, targeting museums, libraries, and digital archives that have long preserved the truth of America’s past. Government programs and policies that provide a safety net for the more venerable in our society have been dismantled. Critical medical and public health research projects that advance health care and our educational institutions are under attack, while our siblings are being rounded up and detained by ICE without due process.
Juneteenth offers us a moment of joy and sacred remembrance. It is indeed a time to remember and celebrate the named and unnamed heroes and sheroes on whose shoulders we stand. We honor them for their commitment to freedom and the sacrifices that they made. They were not passive recipients of freedom because they knew that real change demanded courage and persistence. We have come so far, by faith, and we honor those who never stopped believing in a better future. And it is with songs of joy that we proclaim God’s faithfulness in providing deliverance.
For people of faith, Juneteenth invites us to reflect on what freedom really means.
Is it merely the absence of chains or is it the presence of opportunity and justice?
Is it simply about independence or is it about interdependence and kinship,
where every person’s humanity is valued and respected?
Freedom is not a destination we have reached, but a road we are still walking. As we walk this road, we do not walk alone. In Luke 4:18, Jesus announces to all people of all generations that God “ anointed Him and sent Him “to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1). As followers of Christ, the Spirit of the Lord is upon us now! We are anointed to finish God’s unfinished agenda of releasing captives, restoring sight to the blind and binding up the broken hearted and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor. As the hands and feet of God, Howard Thurman reminds us to find our path and passion, “Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive!”.
As we walk or march, let us claim the power of the Holy Spirit, so we can pick up the sacred work of finishing God’s unfinished agenda. The more we understand the power of our freedom through Christ, hope rises, we face our fears with courage, and we can walk together with honesty, truth-telling and love with an unwavering belief that liberty and justice must be for all.
Our God is marching on.
Click above to watch the worship service at Old South Church, with Rev. June Cooper’s powerful preaching, spoken word, and special music by Donnell Patterson, Ida Kamrara, Chibuzo Dunun, and Black Like Crystal.
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