6/17/2022

6/17/2022

Dear Friends in Christ,

This Sunday, June 19th, is the federal holiday of Juneteenth, (short for June nineteenth). Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day and Cel-Liberation Day, marks the day in 1865 when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to take control of the state and ensure the freedom of all enslaved people. It came a full two and a half years after the emancipation proclamation had been signed.

The confederate army had surrendered two months earlier, but slavery remained relatively unaffected in Texas until that day. Although the emancipation proclamation was issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, it only applied to confederate states and not to slave-holding border states such as Texas or rebel areas already under union control. In December of 1865 slavery was formally abolished by the thirteenth amendment.

Even after General Gordon Granger stood on Texas’ soil and read the proclamation, freedom did not immediately happen for all of Texas’ 250,000 enslaved people. Some slave owners withheld the information for enslaved people unit after the harvest, but where the information was shared celebrations broke out among newly freed black people and Juneteenth was born.

Juneteenth has been a holiday for African Americans since that time, although it only became a federal holiday in 2021, making this year’s holiday only the second official one. Ironically Texas was the first state to make it a holiday in 1979.

While federal holidays are not generally celebrated by the Church, although they are often recognized, this one celebrates the freedom God intends for all of God’s children to live as the people God made them to be. Juneteenth could be understood as an example of the world’s powers and principalities aligning with the kingdom of Heaven to proclaim that all people are made in God’s image, and all are God’s beloved children. Juneteenth resonates with echoes of Leviticus 25, when the Lord spoke to Moses and proclaimed every fiftieth year the year of the Lord’s Jubilee, when people, animals and even the land rests from an obligation to produce and depend on God for their provision. People return to their homes, and land returns to its original owners. Jubilee also includes provision for enslaved or indentured people to be free to return to their homes and live their lives as God intends them to live.

But even while we celebrate Juneteenth, we should not forget that our Church, the Episcopal Church, was actively complicit in enslaving God’s children for many years, and that while the Church has acknowledged this fact and is seeking ways to make reparations for our past sin, there is still a long way to go until all God’s people are truly free, as the world we live in still supports and encourages system of oppression and violence against the most vulnerable and marginalized of God’s people.

Last fall a group of people from Saint Anna’s entered this work by engaging with the Sacred Ground curriculum the Episcopal Church created for this purpose. It was hard and painful work at times, confronting our complicity and acknowledging our sin, but everyone agreed it was worth it and that they got so much from the program. If you are interested in engaging in this work yourself, please let me know and I will consider offering this curriculum a second time beginning this fall.

Yours in Christ

Rev. Jane+

Sources: https://www.history.com/news/what-is-juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth

Leviticus chapter 25 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2025&version=NRSVUE