Juneteenth Observation: A Jubilee Celebration
Jun 16, 2022
The Rev. Kevin Vandiver, Assistant to the bishop
Juneteenth is a celebration started by Black people in the 19th century to commemorate our freedom from being enslaved. As we all may know, Juneteenth was only recently made into a federal holiday in the United States.
What most strikes me this year as I reflect is the reality that Blacks began this commemoration while it was still dangerous to do so. Black people were legally free, but this reality was not still not accepted in all the states. They celebrated in faith—thanking God—sometimes in places where it was illegal for their black bodies to even congregate! The celebration became an act of subversive resistance that declared,
“…before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave…
I’m free. Praise the Lord I’m free!”
A Jubilee celebration.
And with every subsequent celebration since then, we still celebrate under and in the shadow of death. The 1860s were not that long ago, and the forms of bondage have evolved: from bitter chattel slavery, to convict leasing programs, to the rise of Jim and Jane Crow, to the creation of the cradle to prison pipeline, the shadow of death still looms—determined not to go gentle “into that good night.”
And yet we celebrate. Just as the man who was repeatedly chained in this week’s Gospel broke the forms of bondage which held him, I argue that through his own powerful agency, he found Jesus—the ultimate breaker of the cycles of bondage.
In Juneteenth, we celebrate the agency of a resilient people who subversively fight ever-evolving chains, and we have hope that amid it all, the Jesus we serve, upon whom the Holy Spirit rests, preaches the Gospel to the poor; gives sight to the blind; declares liberty to those who are oppressed; and proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord’s favor.
A Jubilee celebration.
Jesus, the cycle breaker, is instrumental as we observe Juneteenth as one who breaks cycles for all who are bound and on the margins.
We are already free. But not yet.
In the meantime, we will celebrate as a symbol of our own resilience and subversive power, thanking God for another day to live and strive for freedom.
Happy Juneteenth. In Juneteenth, we celebrate the agency of a resilient people who subversively fight ever-evolving chains, and we have hope that amid it all, the Jesus we serve, upon whom the Holy Spirit rests, preaches the Gospel to the poor; gives sight to the blind; declares liberty to those who are oppressed; and proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord’s favor.