Now Is A Very Acceptable Time

Today marks the celebration of what has become known as “Juneteenth.” While this only became a federally recognized holiday in 2021, Juneteenth has been celebrated in the African American community in the United States since the mid-1860’s!  It has become known as “America’s second Independence Day” yet has remained largely ignored and uncelebrated by the wider white culture.

There’s a lot I do not remember about what I was taught in school related to United States history but I am pretty sure we never really talked about Juneteenth and its significance.

I have had to do a lot of unlearning and re-learning along the way.

Most of us are probably familiar with the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation in which President Lincoln declared that “all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” While it only applied to the states that were part of the Confederacy (and would need to be followed by the 13^th Amendment), it granted freedom for people.

That freedom, however, would take some time to be fully realized throughout the South, in part, because news traveled slowly, and it could not be enforced. Some states held out.  It was only on June 19, 1865, that federal troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas with news of freedom, and about 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state were declared free.

Thus this day became known as “Juneteenth”[1] and has become known by other names as well: Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Liberation Day, Jubilee Day.

All of those names carry deep spiritual and biblical connotations.

Civil rights leader Vincent Harding said that “there was no peace for America while slavery existed, while Black [people] were determined to be free, while the contradictions of the democratic republic ran like an immense moral fault through the center of its life.”[2] And while we must celebrate days like Juneteenth because of the enormity of what it represents, sadly, many of the contradictions remain with us to this day.

Harding’s words point out that where injustice exists, there is no true peace, and it is incumbent upon us to keep taking up this work.

The great theologian, Walter Bruggemann, also reminds us that systems of oppression and injustice fall “by the mercy of God” and require prophets and allies along the way. He says, “I believe the large truth surrounding us today is that the white, male, Western, colonial hegemony has collapsed by the mercy of God.  The collapse of that hegemony means that we have a chance to reorganize and reconfigure all social relationships.  True prophets are prophets who act in the direction of that collapse and are working at reorganizing social relationships, and false prophets are people who want to keep pretending that they can jack up the white, male hegemony and keep it going.  The pastoral task, then, is to help people face the reality of the collapse and relinquish those old assumptions of privilege, priority, and power.”[3]

Maybe we could all read that last line again and make it personal. “[My] task, then, is to…face the reality of the collapse and relinquish those old assumptions of privilege, priority and power.” We face the collapse and relinquish privilege and power so that we might “reorganize and reconfigure all social relationships.”

That is what Jesus’ kin-dom of God sought to do.

It is what Martin Luther King’s “Beloved Community” was all about.

And it is what our faith calls us to.

No matter where we find ourselves in the struggle, there is work to do. But if you have been on the advantage side of privilege, priority and power, there is more work required.

We hear in today’s first reading from Corinthians (2 Cor 6:1-10), “we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For [God] says: In an acceptable time, I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you. Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

God’s grace collapses systems of oppression.

God’s grace hears the cry of the poor.

God’s grace offers us a chance to release privilege, priority and power.

God’s grace offers us this moment as the acceptable time.

May it not be in vain!

Wishing you all a Happy Juneteenth as we reflect more deeply on this country’s second independence day and all it continues to invite us into.

PS – If you’d like to do further reading on Juneteenth and related topics, please check out a great reading list compiled by the Smithsonian at https://nmaahc.si.edu/visit/museum-store/juneteenth-reading-list?utm_source=smithsonianstore&utm_medium=button&utm_campaign=juneteenth23

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[1] https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/historical-legacy-juneteenth

[2] The Other American Revolution, p. 63.

[3] https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2023/06/16/true-prophets/. An excerpt from a 1993 interview with Walter Brueggemann entitled “Why Prophets Won’t Leave Well Enough Alone.”