Ringing the Cracked Bell of Liberty
Ringing the Cracked Bell of Liberty
Credit: A representative article of today's teaching by Dr. Jeffrey Broadnax
Today is Juneteenth. That's the name given to today's Federal holiday. The full name that is inked in stone is the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act. This is one of the most misunderstood, least well communicated, and sadly one of the most divisive holidays that we know and celebrate.
It should not be.
One of my favorite quotes is this: "We do not see things the way they are. We see things the way WE are." Today my hope is that we would see Juneteenth in the new light that I have come to understand it, with a trip through the threads of history.
This is not a story of Black History. It's not even a story of American History. While it does weave within those two narratives, this is a story much deeper. This is a God story. One that he has written long ago. Jesus has the lesson, the narrative, and the answer for our questions regarding Juneteenth as we know it in America, but also for the Spiritual Juneteenth that we all need to experience and shout from the rooftops. Stay with me throughout this article, and I'll explain. I believe this article may blow your mind, as Dr. Broadnax's teaching did for some of us this morning at a small gathering.
To understand the story of America, we must start with Jesus. In Luke Chapter four, Jesus enters the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth after being tempted and fasting in the wilderness. He was handed the scroll of Isaiah to read from. As he unrolls the scroll looking for just the spot, he stops on what we now call Isaiah 61 – The Year of the Lord's Favor.
"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."
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
True freedom for all. The year of the Lord's Favor. The year of Jubilee. You see, Jubilee was something celebrated about once every 50 years at that time, and it comes from the Old Testament. We find it in Leviticus Chapter 25.
Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan.
Why is this important? Let's begin our journey through some American History.
We've all heard of the Liberty Bell. The Liberty Bell was commissioned in 1752…before the Declaration, before Emancipation, and before Juneteenth. What is written on that bell?
You guessed it. That same verse from Leviticus 25.
"Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants Thereof."
It cracked on its first ringing. It was originally called the State House Bell to commemorate William Penn's Charter of Liberties. It wasn't renamed the Liberty Bell until after the passing of Emancipation. We called it by this name once we began to live out what was started with our Declaration of Independence.
While the Declaration was a fantastic representation of liberty, if we're honest we were not living it as a nation. All men created equal and deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We were so close, though…Jefferson's original draft had certain sections that almost made it into the final document, if not for two colonies that would not sign onto the language. The redacted language read as follows:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life, liberty, and the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold; he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce, and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguishable die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."
If this would have made it into the Declaration, just think where we would have been starting out. Less than a century later, over 600,000 men would die in a brutal war to create a new path forward in our nation, much of which would have been unnecessary if we'd have started correctly from the jump.
Lincoln had written his draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in September of 1862. One year later, he gave the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863.
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
We were a new nation. We were not yet one nation. Conceived in liberty in that first sentence, but not alive fully in liberty as one people. Under God, our nation would have a new birth of freedom. One for all people, once and for all.
One more important historical note…then I promise, onto Juneteenth, and the spiritual Juneteenth beyond.
Our Statue of Liberty. Great Lady Liberty she is called. We know what it reads.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
She is best known for welcoming immigrants into Ellis Island. In her one hand, a torch lights the way. In her other hand, a tablet that reads July 4, 1776.
What many do not know are these facts.
What year was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi broached with the idea to sculpt the Statue of Liberty that now sits just outside of New York?
1865. The year that our Civil War ended, and slavery once and for all was ended in our land. An even lesser known fact…that tablet that sits in our Lady's hand was originally designed as a set of broken chains. It was shot down, but Bartholdi still had the broken chains incorporated into his design; they rest at her feet rather than in her hands. This statue commemorates our step taken toward fulfilling what was started in the Declaration of Independence at the founding of our country.
Emancipation Day. January 1st, 1863.
For some slaves, and especially those in Galveston, Texas, the truth was that they had been set free. Their reality was still a life of bondage and slavery for an additional 1,000 days. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger read the proclamation to the slaves.
One of the first orders of business was to post Granger's General Order No. 3, which began with:
The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection therefore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.
Emancipation had been the law of the land, but wasn't being lived out. Now it was.
A cracked bell. A declaration. A civil war. A Gettysburg Address. Lady Liberty. Many declared free, but still living as slaves. A story of America, of freedom…and of Jesus. The year of Jubilee and its verse is written on our bell.
Our American History has much been designed around separation and power struggles. For those of us in Christ, we must see things in a new light of unity and unconditional love.
Let's quickly look at what the themes are in Isaiah 61, the scroll that Jesus read from when he proclaimed this scripture fulfilled.
Good news for the poor and brokenhearted
Freedom for the Captives
Release from Darkness for Prisoners
Comfort for those who mourn
Provision for those who grieve
Beauty for Ashes and a Garment of Praise for those in despair
An inheritance rather than disgrace
Restored land and everlasting joy
An Everlasting Covenant with God
And who does it say WE will be as this occurs?
We will be oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord to display his splendor, rebuilders of ruins, restorers of devastated places, renewers of cities, priests of the Lord, Ministers of our God, and blessed.
Christians — we are living in a Spiritual Juneteenth. Jesus has already finished the work. All of us who were living as slaves to sin have been set free. It is true, finished work. Our reality may still be bondage, but that's not the truth of the Gospel in our land.
We are the Gordon Grangers. We must proclaim this to those who are still captives. We must shout this good news from the rooftops so that all may know the joy and favor that rests upon them through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must also reconcile ourselves to each other. One church. One body of believers with one central call to true and everlasting freedom offered through a relationship with the one who has all power and authority on earth as it is in Heaven.
I hope this has been an educational encouragement to you. Let the Church proclaim Jubilee throughout our land, even if we're ringing a cracked bell!
-Mark