An update of posts from June 18th, 2018 and June 18th, 2020
Abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, Presbyterian Minister John Rankin and Levi Coffin, worked tirelessly — in many cases even in defiance of the law — to free Black men and women from bondage in the United States. Then on January 1st, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln ratified the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all enslaved persons in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands were to be freed. It appeared that the institution known as slavery had been defeated.
Shockingly, some enslaved African Americans had no idea that President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which mandated that they be set free. In Texas, more than two-and-a-half years passed before they attained the knowledge of their freedom.
For 30 months, African American slaves in Texas were free — but did not know it. They were no longer under the law of slavery, yet they were stuck in the system of slavery. They had no ability to live the abundant life their enslaver owners could enjoy. However, on June 19th, 1865, all that changed and the celebration of freedom began.
Today, Juneteenth is recognized as a federal holiday — a hard-won acknowledgment that the freedom of Black Americans is worthy of a nation stopping to remember, to reflect, and to rejoice. Families gather for cookouts and community celebrations. The Emancipation Proclamation is read aloud. The old spirituals ring out — Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Lift Every Voice and Sing — and the stories of our ancestors are told again so that the children will not forget.
But on this most celebratory day — which is also my wedding anniversary — I must ask a question that this changing world demands we answer:
Are we truly free?
In 2018, I pointed to the church — to believers bound by religious law, measuring the hem of a woman's dress and the length of a man's hair, returning to the six hundred and thirteen precepts of the Old Testament, prisoners to pious and boastful righteousness, never coming to understand the freedom they have in Jesus Christ.
In 2020, I pointed to a nation — to a people enslaved to anger, to unforgiveness, to revenge and to hate. We were in the grip of a pandemic that had taken millions. We were in the streets, divided by race and politics and pain, still serving a wicked master whose name is hatred, even while pledging to be one nation under God, indivisible.
Now it is 2026. And I must tell you — the masters have only multiplied.
We are slaves to our screens, scrolling endlessly, feeding on outrage and algorithmically curated fear. We are slaves to division — not just Black and White, but every kind of us against every kind of them, each side certain of its righteousness and the wickedness of the other. We are slaves to despair, a generation of young people who have grown up in a world of crisis after crisis — pandemic, unrest, economic uncertainty, and a political landscape that seems designed to exhaust and confuse. We are slaves to identity, finding our worth only in what separates us from one another, rather than in what was placed inside us by the God who made us.
Slavery is living a life controlled by something that ought not to control you.
And whatever your chains are called in 2026 — anxiety, bitterness, social media, political tribalism, the trauma of your past, the fear of your future — they are chains just the same.
But here is the Word that has not changed in two thousand years:
"It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." — Galatians 5:1
Like the enslaved men and women of Texas who were free for thirty months and did not know it — working, suffering, and bowing to a master who had no more legal authority over them — too many of us are bowing to masters that were defeated at Calvary. The cross was a proclamation. The resurrection was the General Order. And yet here we are, still reporting to bondage.
Do not be deceived like the slaves in Texas, who served a master out of ignorance.
You were set free — from despair, from shame, from the verdict of your worst moment, from the power of sin and death — approximately two thousand years ago by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation and men stayed in chains for thirty more months.
But when Jesus sets you free, no general has to ride into your town to tell you. No calendar has to turn. No government has to recognize it. The Holy Spirit bears witness directly to your spirit — you are free. You are free. You are free.
So this Juneteenth, as you celebrate with your family — with the barbeque and the red soda water, with the music and the laughter, with the honoring of ancestors who endured the unendurable — let the Holy Spirit remind you that you too have a liberation that goes deeper than any proclamation signed by any earthly hand.
The world is louder than ever. The chains are more sophisticated than ever. The masters have better marketing than ever.
But the Word of God has not changed even one syllable.
"Whom the Son sets free is free indeed." — John 8:36
Walk in it. Live in it. Celebrate it.
And do not go back.
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