Topic: For Christians, Juneteenth Is a Time of Jubilee – Christian News 20 June   2022 – Faithwheel.com

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For Christians, Juneteenth Is a Time of Jubilee

Observing Juneteenth as a national holiday affirms what we believe about our faith and our freedoms.

Iwas never taught about Juneteenth growing up.

I was born and raised in Philadelphia, the “cradle of liberty,” in Pennsylvania—which was the first state to end slavery with the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780. Philly was one of the major stops on the Underground Railroad, thanks to the abolitionism of the Quakers, and the home of Richard Allen’s Free African Society.

And while slavery was abolished in Pennsylvania more than 80 years before the Civil War began, I always thought of the Emancipation Proclamation as the document that ended slavery in America.

It wasn’t until years later when I heard of a woman named Ms. Opal Lee, who walked halfway across the country at 89 years old to advocate for Juneteenth to become a national holiday, that I discovered a history I had never learned in school.

Over two and a half years passed between President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and when the first of those enslaved in Texas tasted freedom: 900 more days of being separated from family and forced to work under the threat of violence and death.

But the question remains, why does Juneteenth matter to the church?

The times set aside to celebrate and reflect reveal what matters to society then, now, and in the future. For instance, Pilgrims in early America set apart “days of thanksgiving” to express gratitude to God for his providential grace—a tradition that was formalized into the national calendar in 1863 with Abraham Lincoln’s official proclamation of Thanksgiving Day “to heal the wounds of the nation” divided by war.

But an even earlier civically inspired sacred tradition was inadvertently established less than a year prior on December 31, 1862—when congregations of Black Christians gathered for “Watch Night” services on what they called “Freedom’s Eve.”

Black churches across the country met to worship, pray, and thank God for the freedom that came to their brethren on January 1, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. But it would be another two years after the first Watch Night service before this proclamation of freedom became a reality in the last holdout state of Texas.

Exploring the legacy of Juneteenth and the hope it still inspires today.

RASOOL BERRY

The arrival of Union troops in Galveston, Texas, was a watershed moment in the nation’s history and included thousands of Black soldiers—some recently freed themselves—who had joined the military unit. The next day, General Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3: an “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.”

The news spread like wildfire, and nicknames for the day proliferated as well: Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Juneteenth, and so on. When I discovered that one of the first names given to the commemoration was Jubilee Day, the significance for the church was brought home like a preacher dramatically coming to the sermon’s conclusion.

Like the national healing sought through the tradition of Thanksgiving, Juneteenth would likewise provide a day of healing to millions of Americans who had much reason to give thanks: those who were set free and those allies of abolition who fought for their freedom.

Described in Leviticus 25, Jubilee was an Old Testament festival to be observed every 50 years to honor the Lord by forgiving debts, releasing fellow Israelites from bondage, and even restoring tribal lands. The name came from the exultant joy that naturally accompanies such a momentous occasion.

That these newly emancipated Americans referred to the day as Jubilee meant they understood their deliverance not only in a physical sense but also in a spiritual sense—no doubt seeing connections between their liberation and God’s deliverance of Israel from over 400 years slavery in Egypt.

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