This weekend Transfiguration joins with Episcopalians around the country in honoring Juneteenth. On June 19, 1865, some two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, and two months after the conclusion of the Civil War, federal troops landed at Galveston to ensure that the enslaved people of Texas knew of their freedom. Similar events took place all over the American south and west in the months after the war's end, but this particular occasion of freedom ringing has been celebrated down through the generations, and two years ago became a federal holiday.

Juneteenth holds within it an appropriate tension. On the one hand, it's an occasion of joy, when we recall the tidings of liberation that reached enslaved people. On the other hand, it's an occasion of lament, for that liberation was long delayed and less than complete. In this sense, Juneteenth best reflects our national paradox around race: at our founding, we declared all people equal, yet 250 years later and we are still fighting to bring that ideal to reality. Juneteenth is an occasion, then, of gratitude and humility, of joy and contrition.

This weekend, we'll mark Juneteenth in two special ways. On Saturday, following The Table at 5:30, our Racial Justice Ministry is hosting a dinner in Roper Hall. At that meal, we'll welcome Bishop Alex D. Byrd and Pastor Marvin T. Roberts, as well as many other members of their congregation, Living Faith Covenant Church, a predominantly Black congregation that is also LGBTQ-affirming. They will bless us with their presence and share with us some of the story of their church.

Then, on Sunday morning at 10:15 in Roper Hall, youth and adult participants from the Civil Rights Pilgrimage back in March will share about their experiences. We visited many of the sacred sites associated with the movement of the 1950s and 60s, and we met many saints of that era whose lives continue inspire our own work for justice and peace today. This will be a special time of storytelling and thanksgiving.

Not long ago I came across a quote from Dr. King that speaks to why Juneteenth is so important for Christians.

We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than 20 or 30 years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

Emancipation may have come in 1863, but it was not fulfilled until it reached every last enslaved ear. Equality may have been declared at the birth of our nation, but it is still a work in progress. For in that great network of mutuality that God has created, in our single garment of human destiny, none of us will ever truly be free until everyone, everywhere, is.

Father Casey