Insurrection, Idolatry, and an Invitation to Risky Discipleship

In the days following the January 6 insurrection, a lot of us tried to make sense of the violence and chaos we watched unfold on live TV from the US Capitol. For as unpredictable as were the days following the election, the scenes of an enraged mob attacking police officers, chanting for the Vice President’s death, and waving symbols of national and religious allegiance defied even the most pessimistic expectations. In the months since, we’ve learned more about the motivations which drove the seditionists and which animate ongoing attempts to disenfranchise voters around the country. And, if we’re paying attention, Christians – and pastors who lead white Christians especially – ought to be rattled by what we’re figuring out.

So, who participated in or supported last year’s insurrection? In a thoroughly researched article for The Atlantic Barton Gellman investigates a number of possible motivating factors. But only “one meaningful correlation emerged. Other things being equal, insurgents were much more likely to come from a county where the white share of the population was in decline. For every one-point drop in a county’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent. This was a strong link, and it held up in every state.” Additional research drew out another disturbing nuance. “Respondents who believed in the Great Replacement theory, regardless of their views on anything else, were nearly four times as likely as those who did not to support the violent removal of the president.” This theory, popular in the right wing media, states that the day is rapidly approaching when white people will not only no longer represent an overall majority in the country, but “African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites.”

In other words, those most supportive of the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government are white people from regions experiencing demographic change who believe they are losing their rights to people of color.

Animating this resentment has been the former president’s lying insistence that he won the election. In reporting done by National Public Radio, Dr. Carol Anderson connects Trump’s “big lie” with his birtherism conspiracy theories during the Obama presidency. According to Anderson, “This is about, ‘My nation is about the real Americans. And all of those folks aren’t real Americans.’ It is so vile. It is so racist. And it works. That’s the thing, it works.” When she says that the tactics work, Anderson is thinking not simply about the insurrection but about the successful attempts by many state legislatures during the last year to make voting more difficult for their citizens. We have, says Anderson, “these legislatures write these laws figuring out not only how to stop Black people, brown people, indigenous people from voting, but also how to lower the guardrails of democracy that prevented Trump from being able to overturn the results in these states.”

According to the Times, the “Capitol riot continues in statehouses across the country, in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court.” Almost three dozen voting laws, many in battleground states, which “empower state legislatures to sabotage their own elections and overturn the will of their voters,” have been passed in recent months. As should be clear by now, these laws will disproportionately impact citizens of color.

So the January 6th insurrection and the systematic attempts to disenfranchise voters are motivated by racial resentment and the desire to consolidate white power. But why should Christians be especially concerned? Shouldn’t we interpret these events through a civic lens?

This is undoubtedly a civic crisis, but recent research by scholars like Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead show how Christianity has been utilized by those who want to remake the country, often through authoritarian tactics, as a haven for white power. In a new article Perry writes that “Christian nationalist ideology — particularly when it is held by white Americans — is fundamentally anti-democratic because its goal isn’t ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ Its goal is power.” Whitehead and Perry’s research shows that white Americans who support Christian nationalist ideology also favor making voting more difficult. Those surveyed were asked whether they’d support “a policy requiring persons to pass a basic civics test in order to vote or a law that would disenfranchise certain criminal offenders for life.” Such policies hearken back to Jim Crow laws which kept Black citizens from voting. “Why? Almost certainly because these arrangements currently give white, rural, conservative Americans an electoral advantage even when they are numerical minorities. Again, the goal is power, not fairness or democracy.”

The research into Christian nationalism is nuanced and shows, in some cases, that the more people participate in the historic practices of Christianity the less likely they are to affirm Christian nationalism. However, this leaves many more nominal Christians susceptible to this undemocratic and racialized ideology. The result is not simply the stomach-turning use of Christian symbols and language at the Capitol insurrection, but also the more subtle ways that white Christians support efforts to disenfranchise their fellow citizens.

And this is where we need to be precise. Many of the people these white Christians want to disenfranchise are their Christian sisters and brothers. Not that their efforts are more tolerable when they impact those who don’t share our faith; Jesus’ teaching on neighbor-love doesn’t allow for that ugly distinction. But the racialized grasp for power is made more evident when we can see that those affected are fellow members of the Body of Christ. Christian nationalists are not acting from their identity as members of Christ’s Body but from imaginations infected by racial resentment and visions of white, nationalistic power.

In the coming months and years we’ll hear a lot about the fight for voting rights. The events of January 6 will be debated and different meanings – traitorous insurrection or patriotic intervention – will be ascribed to them. What will typically be missed, though, is that many white Christians can hold the beliefs common to Christian nationalism, can nurse feelings of racial resentment and utter disregard for neighbors and Christian siblings of color, and simultaneously and happily participate in the ministries of their local congregations. They’ll be able to sing the hymns, amen the sermons, serve in the soup kitchen, and chaperone the youth retreat without their anti-Christian inclinations being disturbed in the least. And this is because their pastors and ministry leaders are interpreting these events in only the most surface of ways- as civic debates about which good people can hold different opinions. They will miss the truer story, which is that the Christians in their spiritual care are captive to racist and nationalistic ideologies that actively harm neighbor and kin.

However, for those willing to dig into deeper truths, a risky opportunity opens up. We have, in the next couple of years, a chance to invite people to renounce their idols and ideologies. This is not a call to partisanship. No, this invitation is better and way harder. With the psalmist we’ll ask, “How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?” (Psalm 4:2) There is no gloating in this question, no shaming. Broken-heartedness and confession must characterize any attempt to lead people into the truth of the gospel and solidarity with the Body. We’ll remember that January 6 commemorates not only an insurrection but the miracle of Epiphany, yet more evidence of God’s unexpected grace displayed in the most unlikely ways.

The specific nature of this discipleship will necessarily look different in each congregation and community. We can trust the Holy Spirit for the contextual wisdom which will produce fruit of repentance. Still, for those willing to risk the invitation, here are a few suggestions. First, the work begins with clarity in our own minds about its specifically Christian nature. While others try to frame the struggle for civil rights in strictly political terms, we will remember the flesh and blood humanity whose well-being is threatened both by the lawlessness of January 6 and the unjust laws marching though legislatures throughout the country. The challenge is one of discipleship so it’s our responsibility to take it on. Second, we’ll count the cost before moving forward. Christian nationalism is powerful and its forming impact has been incredibly thorough. If my own experience is at all representative, we need to be prepared to be written off as misguided, partisan, and wolves in sheep’s clothing. Jesus prepared us for this sort of thing so we don’t need to be afraid when the slander begins. Finally, we’ll be sober about how long this will take. The idols which have recently been unmasked are not new. We won’t preach this false worship away with a single sermon. A book club won’t be enough to rescue people from their warped allegiances. We’ll need all of the Spirit’s gifts and power and each of the pastoral and congregational resources discerned by the church over many generations. Thankfully these gifts and resources exist and are ready for us to apply them to this particular idolatry.

In his article, Gellman writes about January 6 that “the chaos wrought on that day was integral to a coherent plan. In retrospect, the insurrection takes on the aspect of rehearsal.” The events of a year ago will not remain in the past; they are a glimpse into a reality many of us had missed but which will continue to exert great and terrible damage. The devastation will be inflicted not only on our democracy but upon our Christian sisters and brothers as well. Are we prepared to stand in the way? To disciple people away from the idolatry of Christian nationalism and into real solidarity with the Body of Christ?

May God give us the wisdom to understand our times and the courage to respond with the love of Christ no matter the cost.

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(Photo credits: Uncivil Religion and Wikimedia Commons.)

Know Your Divisions

Yesterday afternoon I was talking with a couple of friends who both serve churches in small Midwestern towns. They are thoughtful and humble leaders in their communities and I learn something every time we catch up. This conversation turned to divisions- the ones within congregations and the larger cultural ones which isolate Christians from one another. I can’t say we figured anything out – we’re working on it! – but I found myself encouraged just to hear other clergy, in contexts quite different from my own, wondering about similar difficult things.

These days it’s rare to go very long without hearing about divisions. They come in some predictable flavors: political, regional, cultural, and so one. Some of us have experienced these divides in our own families; we’ve been pushed apart by ugly partisanship. For my part, not surprisingly, I’m interested in how racism and white supremacy have long divided American Christians.

As I listen to these conversations and commentaries, I’ve come to think that there are different types of divisions. They are not all cut from the same cloth. When we lump them together though, we end up engaging these distinct forms with the same tools. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but here are the three types of divisions I’ve observed along with the different tools we might consider engaging them with.

Let’s call the first type of division the good faith disagreement. This one shows up between Christians who’ve come to their convictions through biblical and theological reflection, rooted in particular traditions. Take for example the Christian who hears in Scripture an emphasis on individual responsibility, repentance, and salvation. In discussion with a different Christian who prioritizes biblical themes of community and solidarity, we could reasonably expect some strong disagreement. While that disagreement could lead to division, it certainly doesn’t have to. Picking up the tool of humble discussion could lead both of our hypothetical Christians to read the Bible more holistically. (Full disclosure: I’m the second person – “The Bible is written to a community!” – who’s been helped over the years by conversations with friends who remind me not to lose sight of the unique value of each individual.)

I think the second type of division results from a lack of spiritual formation. In our conversation yesterday, I shared that I get discouraged when Christians don’t seem interested in God’s gift of reconciliation across cultural hostilities and divisions. Many of us simply don’t want it. And while there might be lots of reasons for this lack of desire, one of them is certainly the lack of spiritual formation.

I’m convinced that many Christians, white Christians especially, have been discipled in congregations where there was no expectation at all for reconciliation. There was nothing strange or troubling about cultural and ideological homogeneity. These Christians bring this lack of formation with them to the difficult conversations of our day. And we can look for this lack of formation if we’re paying attention. Take, for example, the debates about immigration reform. I’ve observed the work of friends at World Relief for close to fifteen years and I’ve seen how much of the push-back they receive comes from Christians who aren’t familiar with how God commanded his people to treat the stranger and the foreigner.

Once we notice this formation gap, we can engage this type of division more intentionally. If the first type invites discussion, this second kind requires discipleship. To stick with immigration as our example, we could invite the Christian friend who is unfamiliar with the relevant biblical passages to study some of those with us. We could ask them to read a book like Welcoming the Stranger, Christians at the Border, or Detained and Deported. The key is to remember that this person hasn’t had the opportunity to understand how Scripture speaks to certain difficult issues, much less how Christians over the generations have wrestled with these things. If a lack of spiritual formation led to the division, then discipleship is the way to engage it.

The last type of division, I’ll call it entrenched ideology, is the most difficult one for me. Unlike the previous type, this person knows the Bible (and maybe a bunch of theology), but their commitments are ideological. Their allegiance to a partisan clique outweighs any commitment to the Christians outside of it. They are aware that many of their Christian kin do not share their privilege or perspective, yet their adherence to ideological orthodoxy keeps them from expressing curiosity or care for those sisters and brothers.

In here recent book about climate change, Saving Us, Katharine Hayhoe writes about the different kinds of people who aren’t actively working to cool our warming planet. Most of these, Hayhoe believes, can be convinced to join the fight by finding places where our values overlap. But there is one group, the Dismissives, whose arguments she thinks can safely be ignored. She writes, “For a Dismissive, disagreeing with the science of climate change is one of their strongest frames. It’s so integral to who they are that it renders them literally incapable of considering something they think would threaten their identity.”

It’s the identity part that makes this type of division so difficult. And while I can’t quite write this group off, I agree with Dr. Hayhoe that it requires a pretty direct response: evangelism. I don’t mean to say that these Christian ideologues aren’t actually Christian, but at some point we have to take seriously the allegiances they so publicly display. We have to believe them when they reveal the sources of their identities. When we engage this type of division, perhaps we ought to do so as evangelists, alerting our interlocutors to the good news of the God who gives each of us a new identity… and a new family.

Those are the three common divisions I’ve been noticing: good faith disagreement, lack of spiritual formation, and entrenched ideology. Discussion, discipleship, and evangelism are some of the tools that might allow us to engage more effectively. What about you? What are the types of division you’ve experienced? Have you found helpful ways to engage with those on the other side of the divide?

(Photo: Markus Spiske)

Deliver Me From Fear of Their Fear

“I’ve made the decision that I would rather be on the journey with others, problematic as they may be, than be utterly alone yet content in my righteousness.” I saw myself when I read this sentence in Justin Phillip’s new book, Know Your Place. Maybe I should say that I saw in Phillip’s commitment one of the pervasive tensions I experience in the ministry of reconciliation. It has felt especially taut lately.

I spent a long weekend this summer as the speaker at a Christian camp here in the Midwest. I knew little ahead of time about those who attend this camp though I assumed, given the context, that for many of these women and men racial reconciliation and justice might be more of an abstraction than a regular experience. I wanted to encourage the campers to see Christian unity across cultural and racial lines of division as a gift God intends for all of us, no matter how diverse or homogeneous our settings.

While there were some that weekend who seemed encouraged by this theme and others who, despite their wariness about my motives, enthusiastically engaged with me between sessions, my impression was that many of those in attendance were disappointed by my choice of topic. That might be putting it mildly.

In hindsight I can see some of my missteps that weekend. I had assumed, for example, a generally positive disposition toward the church’s identity as a reconciling people even if the more specific edges of that mission might be debated or even resisted. And I missed the extent to which current cultural arguments about Critical Race Theory have made their way into local congregations. For some at this camp, any mention of justice or race provoked concerns about creeping partisan ideologies. I should have done my research!

In spite these blunders, my time with these three hundred white Christians was a blunt reminder about the deeply held and, from my vantage point, unhelpful assumptions many white Christians have about racial justice and reconciliation. Thought I might have mitigated it slightly, it’s not as though the push-back I experienced would have been eliminated if I had simply chosen my words more carefully or piled up more biblical references. I’ve learned this lesson from Dr. Brenda Salter-McNeil who, as she has written about, discovered that no amount of good exegesis or phenomenal preaching will move those who are content with the racial status quo. Rather than holding to the possibility of a counter-cultural witness to the gospel via a more racially reconciled church, these suggestions appear as a threat requiring a forceful defense.

About halfway through the long weekend, I was reporting by phone to my wife about some of the more animated feedback I’d received. “I guess you won’t be going back there,” she chuckled. Leaving aside the unlikelihood of a return invitation, the truth is that I would return. Though they might squirm at the characterization, I saw myself in my weekend detractors. It was easy to imagine how, given different circumstances, I might express the same suspicious and instincts.

On the trip home I found myself, like Phillips, wanting the possibility of companionship with these men and women more than the isolation that comes with caressing my own self righteousness. But this desire quickly gets complicated when I read something like this in Zadie Smith’s collection of essays written in the early days of the pandemic.

Patient zero of this particular virus stood on a slave ship four hundred years ago, looked down at the sweating, bleeding, moaning mass below deck and reverse-engineered an emotion – contempt – from a situation that he, the patient himself, had created. He looked at the human beings he had chained up and noted that they seemed to be the type of people who wore chains. So unlike other people. Frighteningly unlike! Later, in his cotton fields, he had them whipped and then made them go back to work and thought, They can’t possible feel as we do. You can whip them and they go back to work. And having thus placed them in a category similar to the one in which we place animals, he experienced the same fear and contempt we have for animals. Animals being both subject to man and a threat to him simultaneously.

Using the language of contagion we’ve grown accustomed to as of late, Smith describes racism as a virus which infects white people with a sense of superiority while causing others to appear unlike us, animal-like and threatening. And it’s here, when the evil we’re up against is articulated so plainly, that the tension snaps. After all, what does it mean to journey with those who not only deny this candid history and our active role in it, but who will deny the harm inflicted on our sisters and brothers by this history and its tentacle-like reach into the present?

I too want to choose companionship with “problematic” people over smug righteousness. (Of course, many of these same people view me as the problematic one.) I wonder though, can such a thing be done without agreeing to the lies – about history, ourselves, and those we’ve imagined as unlike ourselves – which scaffold white assumptions and imaginations? Is there any scenario in which I could show up at that weekend camp, having better prepared myself, with a message of reconciliation and justice and told these Christian sisters and brothers the whole truth? Without their retreat to defensiveness? Without my retreat to deception? I’m confessing to you that I’m having a hard time imagining such a scenario. The tension stretches past the point my imagination can bear.

I recently finished a collection of Dorothy Day’s writings. In one essay she reflects on the fear she felt while visiting Koinonia Farm, an interracial community in Georgia which suffered regular attacks during that Jim Crow era. One night a car she and another member of the community were sitting in while on sentry duty was shot at. About this racist violence and the fear it inspired, Day shared her simple prayer. “Deliver me from fear of their fear,” I prayed as I listened, using the words of St. Peter which had been part of the Epistle of last Sunday’s Mass, thinking of the hysterical fear of guilty whites, fear of the past, of the future.”

Day was writing at a time when white southerners were violently acting on their fears of racial integration and equality. We don’t have to compare our day to hers in order to apply her prayer to our own experiences. Today white fear is expressed with claims of reverse racism, beliefs that critical race theory is more threatening than white supremacy, and appeals to a nostalgic national memory. In any case, I’ve come to believe that behind much of antagonism expressed by my would-be companions lies this old fear.

This week a friend reminded me of a passage about white fear in Eddie Glaude’s Begin Again, a book-length reflection on how James Baldwin remains essential to understanding our racialized society. Glaude writes,

In critical moments of transition, when it seems as if old ways of living and established norms are fading, deep-seated fears emerge over loss of standing and privilege… In these moments, the country reaches the edge of fundamental transformation and pulls back out of a fear that a genuine democracy will mean white people will have to lose something- that they will have to give up their particular material and symbolic standing in the country. That fear, Baldwin understood, is at the heart of the moral psychology of the nation and of the white people who have it by the throat. That fear, not the demand for freedom, arrests significant change and organizes American life.

Would my white sisters and brothers, the ones who are suspicious of and at times antagonistic toward attempts at racial justice, admit to this fear? Would they agree that the heat produced by many of the partisan and ideological battles reveal what is actually at stake? That the fight is less about school board policies, federal legislation, and which party is in power today and more about an existential sense of loss?

I don’t know, but I’m curious. Can we imagine spaces where we’re invited to speak to the experience of loss? To trace the line between grief and fear? If these hidden emotions could be spoken, might the space grow to include empathy for those who’ve known far more loss and fear in this country? Or curiosity for how those neighbors have held back despair so that resistance and hope might take root?

Deliver me from fear of their fear. As of today, it’s the best I can do with the tension. I’m a Christian which means that the option to lie to white people, even a little, isn’t available to me. For those who share this faith, it also means that when the invitations to difficult conversations are extended – from a camp, a church, the Thanksgiving holiday with extended family – we will accept them with a stubborn hope that from this unresolved tension comes the occasional step toward the truth.

(Photo credit: Pexels.)

“…a reproach before God and the world.”

There is a strange warning being passed around these days and I expect, with Independence Day coming up, its urgency will be heightened. It comes in different shades, but essentially we are being alerted to a frightening new development which seeks to retell this country’s origin story. If you have even a passing awareness of the back-and-forth about, for example, Critical Race Theory or The 1619 Project produced by the Times you know what I’m referring to. It’s not that most of the critics of CRT or Nicole Hannah-Jones’ work are engaging with particular nuances about the way U.S. American history is being reexamined. Rather, at their most flustered, they have labeled these efforts as un-American and, in some circles, anti-Christian.

However, as we approach July 4th it’s a good time to remember that criticizing the story this country tells about itself has a long history and is, in fact, a deeply Christian instinct.

One of the most obvious example comes in the form of Frederick Douglass’ famous speech on July 5, 1852 to a gathering of abolitionists in Rochester, New York. “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” is the question Douglass put to his audience that day. By questioning the fundamental meaning of the day the nation celebrated its independence, Douglass was forcing his listeners to imagine a different – and truer – story.

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

For Douglass, to not confront a national myth which erased the suffering of so many people, which narrated the privileged as God’s innocent chosen ones, would be deceptive and un-Christian. It would represent a failure of discipleship.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America!

Again, Douglass understands it to be his Christian responsibility to compel those who prefer their comfortable myth to open their eyes to a shameful reality. “Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting.”

There is, of course, room for disagreement and debate as we discuss the complexities of this country’s history. But the wholesale rejection of attempts to tell a truer story, a story which does not center those of us who’ve benefitted from the lies we’ve told but on those who’ve long endured under them, well, this is an un-Christian instinct and one that disciples of Jesus, like Douglass and so many others, must firmly reject.

Using fearmongering and shaming tactics to reinforce a false narrative is to live coherently, if wickedly, from this very narrative. People who have lied about their own goodness and innocence for so long, at the expense of so many, are today repeating what they have always done. Douglass reminds us that despite this long trajectory of deceit, it is possible to stand before the beneficiaries of a warped mythology and speak the plain truth. In fact, our allegiance to Jesus, if not this country, demands it.

I first shared the following post in my newsletter which you can subscribe to here.

There is Freedom: A Juneteenth Sermon

This is a lightly edited version of my sermon from the Sunday before Juneteenth.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17)

Imagine being an enslaved person in Texas at the beginning of another hot summer in 1865. Given the state’s relative distance from the rest of the divided nation and given that Texas itself saw little action during the Civil War, it had been relatively easy for plantation owners and enslavers to hide the news of the Emancipation Proclamation which had been signed by President Abraham Lincoln two and a half years earlier. And so, despite this federal proclamation of freedom, these enslaved women and men toiled under the old status quo of bondage and terror. Imagine being an enslaver and, having heard the proclamation of freedom, choosing to cover it up. Here were people who understood that liberation had come and yet who willfully, purposefully did all they could to obscure and withhold freedom from those who were dying for it.

The freedom about which the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches in Corinth was a freedom from bondage to the law. God had given his covenant law to his people as a template for flourishing. And yet, as we often do, the people had focused on the law not as a sign of God’s covenant love. Instead, they devoted themselves, in Paul’s words, to the letter of the law. They made keeping the law a sign of their righteousness and it quickly became a deadly burden, captivity even. The good news Paul taught in this passage was that the Holy Spirit brought freedom from the condemnation of the law. In Christ, we see through the condemning letter of the law and find instead the covenant of love and freedom that God always intended for us.

Now here’s the thing about God’s freedom: it is comprehensive. For example, in a passage that Jesus will one day borrow for his own mission, the prophet Isaiah’s vision of God’s freedom is good news for the poor, liberty for captives, release for the prisoners, comfort for the mourners; it includes rebuilt ruins and renewed cities; it involves inheritance, ancestral lands, and everlasting joy. Yes, we have the capacity to turn something like God’s covenant of love into a letter which condemns, but God’s desire for our good is so complete that nothing but our total freedom can quench it.

On this Sunday when we remember the news of freedom which finally reached those enslaved image bearers of God, news which had been delayed but which could not be denied, it’s worth spending a few minutes with God’s character of freedom. The enslaver could not hold back the freedom cry. The flesh traders, the kidnappers, the powerful men who had turned human plunder and exploitation into the nation’s most profitable sector, none of them could turn back the word of freedom. The most their pitiful power could do was to slow it down. History tells us that when that transformative word reached the now-freedmen and freedwomen, some simply walked away, never to return. Others negotiated for a wage. In one documented instance, a man named Jourdon Anderson wrote to the man who had enslaved him with a reparations bill: he’d added up the long hours he and his wife had worked, and he figured he was owed a cool $11,680, surely enough to bankrupt his former enslaver. Spouses and parents who’d been separated from each other, stolen from each other, began the search to be reunited. They built schools and churches and elected hundreds of Black representatives to every level of public office. Freedom changes everything. And the Apostle Paul reminds us this morning, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

There are always those who would hinder the Spirit’s freedom. Sometimes the foe is visible and obvious: one who enslaves, exploits, plunders. Other times the foe is subtle: a heart which condemns, a memory which captures, deeply held assumptions which conceal the Spirit’s freedom fruit. Scripture tells us that we have a common enemy who despises our freedom, the evil one who desires our demise. But our Lord Jesus is near, even in those oppositional places, through the presence of his Holy Spirit. And so this morning, I’m asking us to remember that freedom prevails by the Spirit’s presence. In other words, despite the existence of sin and evil in this world and in our hearts, God’s loving freedom will prevail because the Holy Spirit is present. The incarnate Son of God who walked the Galilean hillsides hundreds of years ago is now manifest by his Spirit in and among his followers everywhere. Freedom prevails by the Spirit’s presence.

I use the word prevail intentionally: freedom overcomes, perseveres, outlasts. Prevailing assumes opposition and there is always opposition to freedom. The Corinthians felt condemned by the letter; Black Texans remained captive after emancipation, a result of opposition. But Paul is clear: Don’t be deceived. Freedom is here because Jesus is here. The condemning voice is loud, but Jesus triumphed over condemnations of every kind. The schemes of the enslavers were brutal, the plots of violent men were depraved, the complicity of a nation built on stolen land and plundered bodies was total… but Jesus raised in victory over enslavers and lynchers and the powerful who washed their hands in as a show of innocence all the while trafficking in subjugation and suffering. Jesus triumphed even over these oppositions.

When Jesus was hung from that crucifixion tree, the powers and principalities thought that they had prevailed. The spiritual forces of evil were under the delusional impression that the divine hand which had restrained their worst impulses had finally been removed. But what had Jesus said earlier? “Very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away?” (John 16:7) Why? Because having returned to his Father, Jesus would send his presence, the Holy Spirit. Rather than eliminating Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus has now been poured out on all who believe. There is exponentially more Jesus now and so there is also more freedom.

Now, the spiritual forces of evil have always worked to obscure God’s freedom. The freed Black women and men were faced with onc deception after another: enslavers tried to keep them captive; governments failed to compensate them with the land they had been promised; white mobs attacked Black citizens as they voted. The more of their freedom they claimed, the more violent and devious were the attacks to conceal and dismantle that freedom.

It was no accident that at many early Juneteenth celebrations, the Statue of Liberty was featured prominently, a reminder to everyone of the liberation that was the freedperson’s birthright. Neither was it accidental that these celebrations often included a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation: ...all persons held as slaves … shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States… will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

In response to the deceptions of captors, oppressors, and enslavers, these citizens stood boldly in their freedom. No matter what the liars said, they were free, and they intended to live their freedom.

Do we see this kind of freedom today? We see people fleeing violence on the southern border, gun violence in our city, and violence toward Asian Americans. We could go on. Unquestionably, our situation is radically different from those Texans who had to wait over two years for the news of their liberation, but if we’re honest it can be hard to see freedom’s advance. It can seem as though the forces opposed to freedom are more powerful than God’s desires for the flourishing of his entire creation.

Do we see freedom? There are those who don’t want you to see freedom. Some believe that more freedom for you means less for them so they work actively against it. There are people in our city and suburbs who have secured enough success and stuff for themselves and have turned away from those who struggle and suffer. Others of us can’t seem to see freedom. There are, for example, young people in our neighborhoods who see no roadmap to a free and flourishing life; they’ve seen too much loss already.

If God’s freedom prevails, why don’t we see more of it? Listen to Paul’s claim again. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Is it possible that in our struggle to see freedom we have forgotten that the experience of freedom, like the rest of our discipleship to Jesus, is a matter of faith, not sight?

In John 3:8, Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” You see, the joyful proclamation that the Spirit brings freedom is also a gentle invitation to see what Jesus sees.

Jesus was surrounded by powerful men who wanted his attention: religious leaders, soldiers, kings, and representatives of the empire. Yet most of his time was spent on the margins and among the marginalized. While others planned for freedom by way of a bloody revolt, Jesus was calling a kingdom of righteousness and peace into existence beyond the gaze of controlling power.

Jesus raised the little girl to life, and freedom took a step forward. He healed a blind man’s eyes and freedom took a step forward. He restored a woman to her community, silenced the religious leaders with their condemning letter of the law, washed his disciples’ feet and freedom stepped forward. Jesus gave himself over to bloodthirsty and violent men, men for whom freedom was a threat and not a promise, a curse and not a blessing. Jesus, the free-est person in the universe, became captive for us and our salvation, for us and our freedom. And freedom leapt forward.

Do we see freedom? Ask yourself, what does Jesus see right now? Do you see people getting free by giving themselves to Jesus? Do you see marriages getting restored? Do you see volunteers gathering each week to water and weed the Jackie Robinson Garden? Will you be among them in a few weeks when they begin sharing fresh veggies with our neighbors? Did you hear that our friends at Southside Blooms actually grew during the pandemic? They’re now growing more flowers on more abandoned lots, employing more young people, producing more local honey, and on July 1stthey’re opening their first storefront facility. Do you see the state of Illinois being the first in the country to ban cash bail?

Do you see freedom? What does Jesus see? May I suggest that Jesus sees young people being mentored, he sees overly incarcerated people walking out of prison, he sees brothers who have too much money giving it away to brothers who don’t have enough, sisters who have access to halls of power opening doors for the sisters who don’t. Jesus sees people getting free because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Perhaps you’re struggling still to see freedom. Ask yourself, Where is the Spirit of the Lord not? Show me the place in God’s creation where the Spirit of the Lord is not present. Show me the group of people among whom the Spirit of the Lord is not present. Show me the circumstance, the moment, the season that was too painful, too unjust, too wicked for the prevailing Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Was there ever a debt so debilitating, a grief so great, a lament so long as to overcome the Spirit of the Man of Sorrows, the God who is acquainted with grief, the Son of God who suffered? Was there ever a place or a people so forsaken that they overwhelmed the forsakenness of Calvary?

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And let us shout this truth over our city this morning: There is not a single square inch of this creation where the Spirit of the Lord is not present! Open our eyes, Holy Spirit. Open our hearts. Help thou our unbelief. Let us see what you see. Show us your freedom.

Believing that the Holy Spirit brings freedom opens up new ways for us to live. Think again of the Black citizens after the Civil War. They were technically free, but white people regularly opposed them, sometimes violently. This is one of the things which makes Juneteenth so significant. Each June 19th, African Americans would gather publicly in their cities and towns. The day would often begin with a church service before migrating to a parade through the city’s major thoroughfares. Then, people would gather in a public park and the freedom celebration continued with food and festivities. And when white dominated town councils tried to stop these public celebrations, wealthier members of the Black community (like Robert Church in Memphis) purchased land so that no one could stop these visible demonstrations of freedom.

This, I believe, is an image of God’s freedom. We don’t simply believe that freedom prevails, we live and seek that freedom. The African American citizens who gathered in public spaces knowing that their presence agitated the racists, that the White Citizen’s Council and the Ku Klux Klan were looking on, were not content to think about their federally sanctioned freedom; they didn’t want to hold freedom in their hearts; freedom wasn’t an invisible ideal to hold onto when things got hard. No, those early June 19th worship services and parades and public celebrations were more than a commemoration of the past- they were a proclamation of freedom into the future. A testimony that freedom is always meant to be lived.

Holy Spirit-empowered freedom is not an abstraction. This freedom works its way into us; it changes how we see the world around us, but this prevailing freedom also ensures that we will prevail. If God’s freedom prevails, then you’d better believe that God’s free people will also prevail. We can hear this conviction in Dr. King’s last words in his final speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis (1968): I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Think of Isaiah’s freedom proclamation again, the one Jesus would one day apply to his own life and ministry. The reason the promises rang so powerfully was not because they were a beautiful articulation of liberty from sin, sickness, and suffering. It’s because the people who first heard these words were desperately in need of an experience of God’s freedom. The poor were ready for the good news; the brokenhearted were ready to be put back together; the captives were ready for liberty; the mourners awaited their God’s comfort and those who grieved anticipated the day when mourning would be exchanged for joy, despair for praise.

Their cities had been laid waste; the walls which symbolized security and prosperity had been pulled down. They were a people who needed far more than a description of freedom, a theory of freedom, a sermon about freedom. They needed an experience of divine freedom which would enter their situation and allow them to endure. This is the word of God which Isaiah spoke to a besieged and beleaguered people. It was an active and accomplishing word, a word that would prevail.

How many know that this is the freedom word our world is desperate for today? We have been set free by Jesus. What is it that we are doing with our freedom? Jesus said in John 8:36, “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” And what do people do who’ve been set free by Jesus? What do people do who understand that where the Spirit is there is freedom? What do people do who can stand amidst the rubble of captivity and condemnation with an unshakable conviction in the prevailing nature of God’s freedom? We seek that same freedom for everyone. Free people, free people.

I know this has been a hard season for many of us. Our losses have been great. The grief has been persistent. The opposition has been real. Do we actually have the ability to peer through all of this and find Holy Spirit freedom breaking in? Do we have the energy to be agents of freedom ourselves? To proclaim the saving and liberating gospel of Jesus to those bent down by the letter of the law? To those who’ve yet to hear the gospel of grace? Do we have the courage to stand in our freedom against the spiritual forces of evil whose lies have infected our systems and societies? To stand against the powerful interests bent on disenfranchisement and disinvestment?

The Holy Spirit of God who is himself freedom everywhere in creation is the same Spirit of freedom who is in you. The same Spirit of God who animated the saints before us, the women and men who had every reason to believe that their captivity would be permanent and who yet lived and breathed and agitated for freedom, that same freedom Spirit is alive in you.

Because the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, freedom is upon you. And so, through you, anointed child of God, filled with Spirit of freedom, good news will be proclaimed to the poor; the brokenhearted will be restored; captives willbe freed and prisoners released; the Lord’s jubilee will be announced; mourners will be comforted and those who grieve will be granted crowns of beauty; spirits of despair will be exchanged for garments of praise.

I first shared the following post in my newsletter which you can subscribe to here. (Photo credit: Clement Eastwood.)