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Dear Clergy and Lay Leaders,
I wanted to send a note to you about the upcoming Juneteenth holiday. We’ve fielded a number of questions about how the churches in our diocese can commemorate this day. But I was born and raised in Buffalo. It’s my hometown. And after the events of last Saturday, my focus shifted to being with the community I still claim as part of me and the loved ones of those affected by the events that unfolded last Saturday.
Once again, we, as a nation, are struck/horrified/dismayed to think that one of God’s children might choose to do this to others and stuck trying to understand how we respond, both as congregations and as individuals.
At a time such as this one, immediate pastoral letters abound. There are litanies for mourning and prayers for an end to gun violence. But after the dust settles, what then?
That’s where the work of our Baptismal Covenant draws us forward to strive for justice and peace. This is the work of Becoming Beloved Community. It is the work of the Gospel. It is the work we are called to do to love one another as God loves us, in an effort to drive out the hate and darkness of the world, so that tragedies like the one that happened last weekend don’t happen again.
Which brings me back to Juneteenth. This year, June 19 falls on a Sunday. It is the date that commemorates when enslaved Blacks in Texas learned that they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation over two years before. It was made into a Federal Holiday just last year. And it’s complicated. For me personally, I have trouble finding cause for celebration on a day whose roots are based in the continued exploitation of others. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a role for those congregations who wish to mark the occasion.
Aside from preaching and teaching about the reality of this event, one of the best ways you can participate happens outside the walls of your parish — and that is to find out what activities are being presented by African Americans in your community, and joining in those remembrances and celebrations. Sometimes the best ways we can be beloved community are by meeting others where they are outside of the walls of our parish.
That’s just one way we show the type of support that goes above and beyond our thoughts and prayers to actions that can build bridges and relationships and bring us closer to the reconciliation that God so desperately desires for all of us.
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