A Juneteenth Celebration Sermon
Isaiah 65:1-9
65I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that did not call on my name. 2I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices; 3a people who provoke me to my face continually, sacrificing in gardens and offering incense on bricks; 4who sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places; who eat swine’s flesh, with broth of abominable things in their vessels; 5who say, “Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.” These are a smoke in my nostrils, a fire that burns all day long. 6See, it is written before me: I will not keep silent, but I will repay; I will indeed repay into their laps 7their iniquities and their ancestors’ iniquities together, says the Lord; because they offered incense on the mountains and reviled me on the hills, I will measure into their laps full payment for their actions. 8Thus says the Lord: As the wine is found in the cluster, and they say, “Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it,” so I will do for my servants’ sake, and not destroy them all. 9I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and from Judah inheritors of my mountains; my chosen shall inherit it, and my servants shall settle there.
Most of us pay attention to the words we hear in church. Or at least that is my hope. But how frequently do we attune our hearts to the feeling behind the words? This morning’s first reading from Isaiah floods our hearts with the urgency of a God who is searching us out but we close our ears to this God.
Such an empathic reading of the prophets comes from Abraham Heschel, a Jewish biblical scholar. He examined the inner emotional connection between God and Prophets. He describes the relationship as one of pathos. The prophets feel the inner life of God. They are attuned to the ups and downs of God’s heart. Their voice becomes the voice of God crying out to a people who closed their ears and their hearts to this deeply sensitive God. “I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that did not call on my name.”
Can you hear it? Can you feel the urgency in God’s desire, a desire that is not reciprocated? We all know those feelings of unrequited love, unreturned affection. That urgency, that desire finds a home in the heart of God. “I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that did not call on my name.”
As we listen to the prophets we too might attune our hearts to the heartbeat of God. God feels an urgency not only to communicate with God’s chosen people. God feels an urgency to bring justice to the earth.
“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5: 24) If ever a prophet sensed the need for justice, Amos was that prophet. He burned with an urgency that God felt to right the wrongs of ancient Israel. The foremost prophet of our generation, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. echoed that message of the Amos. Like the prophets of old, Dr. King felt that same holy urgency, that identical blessed justice.
We gather today and celebrate Juneteenth. For some of us, Juneteenth comes as a new celebration. For others of us who kept the day for years, Juneteenth has finally become a national holiday.
We all know that on June 19, 1865 Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. We remember that this event happened two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863. Only when the Northern troops enforced the Emancipation Proclamation in the Southern states were slaves actually freed.
Freedom from slavery marks a significant moment in our country’s history. I am reading Robert Jones’ novel, The Prophets which tells the graphic story of life on a Mississippi plantation before the Civil War. I did not imagine the indignities which white slave owners inflicted on black slaves, the brutality which undermined their personal worth, the forced rape of women by other slaves and by white men to increase the number of slaves, the violence of whipping, beatings and humiliations which suppressed their human dignity.
When I read these pages, I am imagining the tears which fell from God’s eyes as God beheld beloved children tortured. The words from Isaiah came to mind: I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me.
From 1619 through 1865, our nation was guilty of the most grievous sin through the institution of slavery. God was ready to be sought by people of justice but economic accumulation made people deaf to God’s presence. For almost 250 years, we shut God out from our country. We as a nation need to repair the wrongs white persons committed against persons of color.
In parts of our country people are engaged in conversations on reparations and restorative justice. We all know that after slaves were liberated nothing was done to repair the wrongs they endured; no justice made right the evils they suffered. We are well aware of the systemic injustices perpetrated by Jim Crow Laws, lynchings, segregation, an incarceration system targeting persons of color, and the disparity between black and whites in wealth, education, health care and civil rights.
I invite us to look at this situation in our nation as God does: through tears of lamentation and years of injustice. Even as prophets felt a deep sense of God’s intolerance of injustice, I invite us to develop that sense of moral solidarity with one another so we can feel that the injustices suffered by some of our siblings are suffered by all of us. We all form one community, God’s beloved community, we are all knitted one to another as members of God’s beloved family. May our celebration of Juneteenth deepen our awareness of how interconnected we are with one another. From that deep sense of interconnection may God fan in our hearts the flame of justice that we may not only celebrate this Freedom Day but actively work for freedom in our nation.