06-20-24

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
June 20, 2024
Yesterday was Juneteenth, the celebration of Union troops arriving in Galveston Bay with the news of freedom for more than 250,000. Two years earlier, on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The Thirteenth Amendment passed in January of 1865, but news did not reach many living in Confederate territories until months later. Yesterday was the anniversary of that news arriving in Galveston, but this morning would have been the first morning for thousands of people to wake up free. I have mornings where I get out of bed with a bit more enthusiasm and energy. Maybe there is something exciting—something I have been planning for quite some time. The emotions I have felt, even on my better mornings, cannot even begin to compare to what it must have felt like to wake up free for the first time in life. There are so many things we awaken to each morning without question, simply assuming that all the freedoms and privileges we enjoyed yesterday will be ours today. In a time when Christian Nationalism is on the rise and there are people seriously talking of making this nation a theocracy (actually, what they want is not a theocracy but a nation created in their own narrow and self-serving image), we need to pause and appreciate what freedom for everyone looks like. An extreme ideology like that of Christian Nationalism (or White Christian Nationalism) would not leave room for those on the margins, and though we are not on the margins, those in inclusive and open-minded congregations like Cypress Creek Christian Church would not fit their small-minded understanding of Christianity. It does not matter what religion people claim to believe, as every so-called theocracy in human history has been nothing more than a dictatorship or oligarchy that uses the language of religion to provide legitimacy to their unjust wielding of power over others. Today, I am pausing and using my imagination to capture just a glimpse of what it must have been like so many years ago when the sun rose on the lives of those who had just learned of their freedom from slavery. Joy does come in the morning!

Holy God, Liberator of all humanity, we seek a faith that is bold and uncompromising in its pursuit of love, kindness, and justice. Even when the headwinds of tyranny seek to reverse the work toward a still more perfect union, we seek renewed faithfulness for the day that lies ahead. Amen.