Watching the dazzling red glare of rockets as they burst above the typically quaint and quiet small town of Paullina, Iowa, I deeply contemplated the calling for such pomp and circumstance. Their annual Gymboree was something to see.

Amid this season of jubilation, between the celebrations of enslaved liberation [Juneteenth] and the birth of our nation [Fourth of July], I was reminded of Frederick Douglass’s poignant question asked in 1852: “What to The Slave is the Fourth of July?” 

Some 170 years later, as the fireworks fly, I am compelled to ask: “What To Me, the Free, is Juneteenth and Fourth of July?”

At my core, it’s a calling to celebrate, critique, and co-create something great, like mile-markers on a journey toward Jesus, justice, and jubilee.

For Douglass, The Celebration:

God speed the year of jubilee

The wide world o’er!

When from their galling chains set free,

Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,

And wear the yoke of tyranny

Like brutes no more.

That year will come, and freedom’s reign,

To man his plundered rights again

Restore.

…

Godspeed the hour, the glorious hour,

When none on earth

Shall exercise a lordly power,

Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;

But to all manhood’s stature tower,

By equal birth!

That hour will come, to each, to all,

And from his Prison-house, to thrall

Go forth.

In Minneapolis, amidst stark health, wealth, and education disparities, Juneteenth and the Fourth of July become beacons of hope and a catalyst for change. Both call us to embody practices and advocate for policies that dismantle racism and systems of oppression to ensure equity. To close the gaps of human flourishing is worthy of celebration.

Juneteenth and The Fourth of July compel us to engage in conversations that challenge biases and bridge divides. It urges us to dismantle oppressive structures and create a society where every person experiences true freedom, justice, and flourishing. They are days designed to help us celebrate a possible deeper freedom.

For Douglass, The Critique: 

“I answer; {The Fourth of July is} a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”

While Juneteenth and the Fourth of July celebrate declarations of independence, they are reminiscent of the Biblical year of Jubilee—a time of restoration and release from bondage. Juneteenth, in particular, strikes closest to this biblical notion as it marks the belated enforcement of emancipation, critiques the “gross injustices” of enslavement, and offers a call to repair and reset societal injustices. Juneteenth was recognized federally in 2021, and it celebrates the freedom of enslaved peoples that had been delayed for two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

And yet, here I stand, in 2024, wondering if that freedom has yet been realized.

As a faith-formed leader and African American man in Minneapolis, the murder of George Floyd was a stark reminder of the ongoing systemic racism and police brutality that exposes where freedom is yet to reach. It underscored the urgent need to confront ongoing racial injustice and systemic inequalities that persist in our communities. Floyd’s murder critiqued the world as it is.

We mustn’t shy away from critiquing the world as it is. Listen to the words of Jesus as he read from the Isaiah scroll one fateful day in Nazareth:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

In Jesus’ time, there were tremendous expressions of oppression based on ethnicity, class, and gender. The poor were oppressed. The prisoners and blind were marginalized by customs, traditions, and prejudice.  He exposed and critiqued these dark expressions in readings, teachings, and prayers so that they would diminish in power. Perhaps Douglass’s motives for leveling critique were not too far distant from Jesus’ motives, as revealed in Douglass’s words: “I expose slavery in this country because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.”

To experience Jubilee as Jesus and Douglass understood it requires that we work toward the end of oppression and systemic racism in our society today. The Year of Jubilee challenges us to see Juneteenth and the Fourth of July as a call to critique any society not rooted in the values of hope, healing, justice, and reconciliation. 

For Douglass, The Co-Creation:

Until that year, day, hour, arrive,

With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,

To break the rod, and rend the gyve,

The spoiler of his prey deprive —

So witness Heaven!

And never from my chosen post,

Whate’er the peril or the cost,

Be driven.

Do you observe Douglass’s resilience and hear his invitation to us to join together in ushering in the world God is making? It’s an invitation to join as committed and creative peacemakers, advocating for racial justice and engaging in transformative conversations that cultivate flourishing for all.

Let’s embrace our role in co-creating a society where freedom and reconciliation prevail. Let’s celebrate Juneteenth and The Fourth of July as historic events and a continual catalyst for the healing journey toward justice and liberation for all.

So, my fellow Everyday Peacemakers, Juneteenth and The Fourth of July represent potentially holy experiences to celebrate, critique, and co-create a just kin-dom, a beloved community characterized by the freedom that demands action, justice, and reconciliation…not for our glory, but for God’s glory and our neighbor’s good. 

The journey continues until the words of the Isaiah scroll are made true for me, as much as they are for you.

This is what Juneteenth and the Fourth of July is to me — The Free.