On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, TX bringing news of the end of the Civil Way and to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect January 1, 1863…2 1/2 years before.

In Texas, thousands of slaves endured 2 1/2 years of slavery. And in fact, slavery did not end in Delaware or Kentucky for another six months after that, ending in December 1865. Freedom was a long time in coming.

That is why African Americans have celebrated Juneteenth, which is June 19th, since 1866, a day honoring the liberation and independence of America’s enslaved people. Since 1866 this has been celebrated, but I only learned about it a handful of years ago and every year it seems, there’s still more folks who are coming to learn about this important holiday – this day of independence for our enslaved brothers and sisters.

No Longer Slave nor Free

Paul, in today’s text in Galatians, says there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free. In the ancient world, around 30% of the people were in fact slaves. Slavery was a very real, very present part of their lives with huge social distinctions between who is a slave and who is free. These distinctions mattered a lot, as they did in the American south. These distinctions meant life or death, freedom or shackles, safety and justice or unrestrained abuse. We still make distinctions that have huge implications in people’s lives. And yet, here’s Paul saying the distinctions melt away to nothing in Christ.

This text, like the gospel text, is about freedom. The possessed man in the gospel was freed of the demons by the healing presence of Jesus. These demons were not going to hang around with Jesus and the man was brought into the freedom and health of Christ. Also, in the Galatians text, Paul tells us in Christ we come to all be heirs of God’s promise to Abraham. The promise is our covenantal relationship God, which God promises to keep with us for the good of all people. The God of the universe promises to care for you and all of us. In this promise, Paul tells us no longer do our petty distinctions matter; we are freed of our own smallness. The promises of God are so much bigger than our rules and ideas of who’s in and who’s out. That promise is for you, for all of us – for the slaves, for the free, for all.

Freedom of a Christian

As I was talking with Barbara yesterday about today’s texts, she mentioned that Galatians was a favorite of Martin Luther, the theologian and church reformer for whom our Lutheran faith is named. In one of his most famous writings, the Freedom of a Christian, he talks about the freedom Christians experience in Christ. He says in our relationship with Christ, we are “perfectly free lords of all, subject to none.” It’s easy to like this statement, isn’t it? In Christ, we are free to live our lives as God would have us live our lives. And then, this is where he continues his sentence, as Christians we are free, but also “perfectly dutiful servants of all, subject to all.”

It’s quite the paradox, perfect free and perfect servants. To understand this, Luther offers a helpful metaphor of our relationship with Christ as being like a marriage. In this marriage, what is ours is Christ’ and what is Christ’ is ours. So, our sinfulness, confusion and pain become Christ’ burden and in our relationship, we receive Christ’ love, compassion, and faithfulness in return. This is called the “happy exchange,” because we are definitely on the winning end of this marriage.

Christ’s Baggage

But, Christ comes with some baggage to this marriage. He comes with the pain of the world on his shoulders. He comes with the world’s sin and suffering. So in our relationship with Christ, we too are brought into relationship with the pain of the world. We may be lords of all, but we are also servants of all, servants to all who need Christ’ freedom and healing, just like we do. It’s a both/and thing.

Christ enters into our devastating realities and brings about transformation. He does not stay out of the fray, away from the violence and pain. He enters in. While any of us are enslaved, he is enslaved. While any of us are hurting, he is hurting. And as we enter into our shared life in Christ, as we clothe ourselves in Christ, as Paul says, we too find ourselves enslaved and hurting by sharing in the life of Christ. We cannot live in Christ, live in the flow of the happy exchange with Christ and avoid the pain of the world. We are called in Christ to together bear this burden, be with the suffering, and watch with hope and anticipation for the transformation and resurrection of Christ in these pained places in the world and in our lives.

Happy?

However, the hope doesn’t mean that we’ll always be super happy about the transformation and resurrection when it comes. In the gospel, the people were afraid when they realized what Jesus had done for this man, that he was healed and freed from the demons. Perhaps these folks had become accustomed to the fact that this poor man was afflicted and had to be shackled, maybe for his own safety. Maybe they lamented the situation, but shrugged their shoulders and said something like, “What can you do?!” And then here comes Jesus, who drives the demons away, heals the man, and they are scared and not happy. 

I bet the white folks of Texas on June 19, 1865 were not happy. I bet they were scared and angry, even if some of them thought slavery had to end. God’s liberation is bigger than we want sometimes, as scared people. As progress and justice slowly move forward through the years and centuries, perhaps we too find ourselves scared by God’s liberating action. Perhaps we too maybe want to keep just some of these distinctions that Paul tells us melt to nothing in Christ.

Thankfully we do not need to rely solely on our limited human courage, vision, or love.

We have Jesus Christ as our partner in the happy exchange. We can offer up our fear and resistance to Christ in prayer. We can offer up our anger and confusion. We can offer up all that we are and all that we have, and pray for transformed hearts and minds. We can pray to be the people Jesus needs us to be as we live into our lives and calls as Christians, so that we can live in God’s promise of hope and joy for all people.

Juneteenth honors the ending of American slavery and the liberation of millions of people into a fuller promise of citizenship. There is more work to do in our country and the world as we live into the hope and promise of Paul’s words, as he declares our small distinctions as null and void and these inequalities fade into love and equality through Christ. With Christ and in Christ, all things are possible and we live in hope and gratitude for the coming blessings and promises God extends to us all.

AMEN