Sabbath Devotional :: Some Anxious Thoughts about Juneteenth

I was thrilled to hear President Nelson mention Juneteenth in announcing the Church’s first small steps towards real partnership with the NAACP. I’m so glad that it will be a national holiday, a belated and partial acknowledgment of the horrors visited on our Black sisters and brothers for generations, a moment for those whose freedom was so late in coming to celebrate and be celebrated. I learned about Juneteenth embarrassingly late in life. And, truthfully, I think embarrassed is how I still mostly feel; the privileged ignorance of much of my life makes me ashamed. I don’t feel entitled to participate fully, or at least I don’t know how to participate in a way that is appreciative without appropriating joy that is not rightfully mine. I feel very much the way I feel when I watch this stunning choral performance.

It begins with a tune I know and have loved since I was a little girl. There’s a connection to my own faith tradition — at some point, this performance began with Tabernacle Choir Director Mack Wilberg’s arrangement. But there is something deep and rich and new in the gorgeous organ harmonization and in the congregation’s ecstatic response to it. And the singing! Though I know the notes to the alto part, this singing is colored by deeper pathos and richer joy than I can fully understand. The only way for me to feel this joy is to first enter more fully into my own covenants to mourn with those who mourn, to learn deeply the suffering that racism inflicts and to do the work that will bring comfort to those who are afflicted by it. Atonement and reconciliation are gifts of grace that can come only through our shared devotion to Christ and our covenant of belonging to Him and to each other.

I think, or at least I hope, that if I had been in the room for this performance, I would have recognized my place — to take a seat in the back of the room and observe in awe. (Though I doubt I would have been able to completely stifle a few dorky white girl Amens!) And that feels like the right way to do Juneteenth, for now at least –– to listen and learn and bear witness.

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

May our Juneteenth celebrations be truer and more joyful every year.