The gist of the insight is that people don’t make people free. We lack the authority and capacity.
Our God in Christ makes people free. People are born free and fashioned in order to be free. In our hearts, souls, and bodies, we have all we need to make the most of our God-given freedom.
But other people interfere with God’s will. We make of ourselves stumbling blocks along God’s freedom way.
Lincoln didn’t free enslaved people. In the mind of God, they were always free. I’m glad federal troops made it to Galveston on Juneteenth in 1865 and enforced the logic of the end of the Civil War by brandishing their rifles and bayonets. But they didn’t free anybody. They just shoved sin out of God’s way and back into the shadows, where it awaited a more opportune time. Jim Crow. And again today.
Freedom didn’t ring on July 4. It rang at the big bang, when God said let there be light and life.
The Episcopal Church didn’t permit marriage equity. We just stopped pretending it hadn’t always existed, as God brought people together in love and life, as God always has, without reference to man-made rules and regulations.
Government doesn’t give people the right to vote. They were born with the right to vote. Tyrants, courts, and Congresses — all they can do is take our rights away.
Nevertheless, I say happy freedom day. Happy Juneteenth.
The lesson I take is to look around my one life to see how I might be a stumbling block. So I can get out of God’s freedom way. May it be for us all. May the perfection of freedom and justice for all that has always lived in the mind of our God in Christ at last shine like the sun on a Galveston morning, flashing in the steel of the bayonets and the hopeful eyes of God’s people.
[A portion of my remarks at a Juneteenth evening prayer service on Saturday, sponsored at St. John’s Cathedral in Los Angeles by the H. Belfield Hannibal Union of Black Episcopalians. Bishop-elect Antonio Jose Gallardo Lucena was in attendance. The Rev. Joseph Oloimooja was celebrant. The Rev. Dominique Nicolette Piper preached a rousing sermon. The Rev. Guy Leemhuis was minister of ceremonies and, for our hymns, songs, and anthems, fronted elements of the Enchanted Rainforest Band. He also called for a renewal of our commitment to Black and historically Black missions and parishes.]
