Juneteenth, Pride, and Wearing Christ

Sermon

I was remembering Father’s Day from the perspective of childhood. Around age nine, I wanted to do something very special for my dad for Father’s Day. Shopping with my mom, I spotted a men’s brown suede vest with long fringe. It sort of looked like something Daniel Boone or maybe one of the Beatles would wear. (I guess you can deduce which era this was!) I can’t remember if I had enough money to purchase it on my own or whether my mom helped. But I do remember the pride I had in seeing my Dad put that vest on. It was more than a garment. It was a visible sign of the love in our relationship. Yes, my dad was the authority figure in my life, the disciplinarian, and the enforcer. But first and foremost, he loved me, and that inspired my closeness. His wearing the vest was a visible expression of an invisible reality: unconditional love. 

The need we have as human beings for loving relationship is sometimes in tension with rules and laws. That brings us to the passage we read from Galatians.  

The apostle Paul was addressing a problem in the early Christian community in Galatia. The founders of the community were rooted in Judaism and following the law, the Torah. Now, as this community was expanding to include Gentiles, there was conflict. The church was requiring that Gentiles be circumcised in order to be included. Paul advised that the old law had served its purpose. Now, in Christ, and shown through the symbol of baptism, there is new life for each person. There is freedom and equality. 

Paul intended this message to be for the church, the body of Christ, in the midst of a culture that separated people from one another, and oppressed, through slavery and patriarchy, men from women, slaveholders from slaves, Jews from Gentiles, the wealthy from the destitute. But in the Body of Christ, ALL are equal and beloved of God. Those at the margins of the larger culture are completely enveloped in the same love as those at the top.  

Paul’s letter prompts the question: Just how wide can we open our arms to welcome in diversity? Jew, Greek, free, slave, man, woman… Within the framework of grace, there is no privileged few, no elites, no favored ones. Grace means that we are all equal before God. 

New life in Christ means being part of a community and deepening our relationship to one another and to God. It’s not about squeezing ourselves into a narrow set of rules. When we wear Christ, when we are deepening our relationship with God and others, we are going to live in such a way that our care and service for others means we don’t require legalism to keep us from hurting others. 

“Wearing Christ” is deepening within ourselves the practices of love, justice, and peace. It may become visible, like a beautiful garment. But it will always sustain us, no matter what: COVID, mass shootings, discrimination and racism, war, endings of marriages, strained families. Wearing Christ is about the basis of our relationship to God in the present. It’s who we are meant to be—beloveds of God, learning always to love and serve others.  

One reason to keep coming to church is that we help one another cultivate our daily practices of centering in God’s love, whether that be through prayer, meditation, walks in nature, listening to uplifting music, making music, dancing, spiritual reading, or journaling. We continue at Westminster to gather together in ways that point out God with us and help us to weave together an inner garment of peace and beauty. 

So, today is a convergence of Father’s Day, Pride weekend—we have Westminsterites at the parade, cheering today—and the anniversary of Juneteenth. It’s important as we consider the role of law in our lives to recognize that there have been and continue to be laws that are deliberately exclusive and which keep people at the margins. For women, there was the inability to own land or to vote. For the LGBTQ community, there were laws to keep people from marrying those they loved. For Blacks in the U.S., there were laws restricting whom they could marry, and there are laws that restrict voting rights. Though we aspire for laws to be just and to make our communities better, our human institutions are fallible.  

And, yes, it continues to be the case that we sometimes need law and enforcement to make changes in our country. As people of faith, we keep pressing for greater justice. It’s never been more important to stay engaged.  

No matter our race or age or gender, we recognize the truth in this saying by voting rights activist, Fannie Lou Haemer: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” 

That’s why this message for the church about new life in Christ and equality in God is so key. If we can live the model of the body of Christ, there is more hope for the world and a reason and calling to share what we have. 

Theologian James Cone noted that “Reconciliation isn’t just about God’s deliverance of slaves from bondage, it is also the slaves’ acceptance of their new way of life, their refusal to define existence in any other way than in freedom. Reconciliation is not simply freedom from oppression and slavery, it is also freedom for God.”  

When we are “wearing Christ,” we experience newness of life in the present. Being in Christ produces freedom, joy, peace, and love. 

Just laws and the enforcement of them have long been an issue in the United States. The history of Juneteenth is the perfect example. 

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are and henceforward shall be free.” But that message was deliberately not communicated to all Black Americans, as the slaveholders were responsible for communicating it.  

It was two and a half years later, on June 19, 1865, 157 years ago today, the decree informed the people of Texas that enslaved individuals were now free. That decree was backed by 2,000 troops to enforce the liberation of over 250,000 captive slaves.  

As those who were formerly enslaved were recognized for the first time as citizens, Black Americans came to commemorate Juneteenth with celebrations across the country, building new lives and a new tradition that we honor today.  

As we think of what it means to “wear Christ,” the new life of freedom, consider what new clothing meant to newly freed slaves. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs, an abolitionist activist and writer who escaped slavery, recalls: “I have a vivid recollection of the linsey-woolsey dress given me every winter by Mrs. Flint. How I hated it! It was one of the badges of slavery.” 

In celebrating the first Juneteenth, freed people found freedom in casting away the clothing associated with their life as slaves. According to Juneteenth.com: “During the initial days of the emancipation celebrations, there are accounts of former slaves tossing their ragged garments into the creeks and rivers to adorn clothing taken from the plantations belonging to their former ‘masters.’” 

Dress remains a big part of Juneteenth celebrations today. For some celebrating Juneteenth, it is customary to wear your nicest outfits as a way to honor the enslaved who had no control over their clothing choices.  

Many today will be wearing rainbow colors, to claim their freedom to be themselves, LGBTQ. Many today will be dressed in their finest for Juneteenth. And there might even be some understanding father who is dressed in a gift from his well-meaning child.  

What do you need to change in your life that will help weave an inner garment of more love and peace? What does “wearing Christ” mean for you? What does that look like? How does it feel?  

What will the world be like when we are wearing Christ that is visible to the world?