From the Pulpit: Finding Hope in Juneteenth

Preaching for Juneteenth Sunday, Canon Missioner Leonard Hamlin said it's easy to identify with those early disciples, who were afraid and assaulted and never sure what would come next.

But, Leonard said, we can take hope in Juneteenth’s promise of freedom, and Trinity Sunday’s promise of the Holy Spirit:

Whether or not you realize it, all of of us have our backs against the wall and need some faith, just like those in the early church. Jesus was speaking to them. And those in the early church, they held onto their faith in Christ because their faith was not inherited from comfort. It was here inherited and born out of suffering, sharpened by injustice and strengthened through resistance.

And yet faith did not simply offer them a way to endure suffering. It offered a vision to imagine what would be beyond this moment.

And so I ask you to begin to imagine what your home could look like when you get back, what your family could be if you did a little bit more; what your community could be like if you sacrificed just a little bit; what the world would sound like if we made a little more noise.

How much love could be passed from heart to heart and breast to breast if we spoke to the stranger and welcomed those who are called the unlovable; picked up those who have been knocked down, stepped down, pushed out, shoved aside.

Faith offers us a vision of what can be, what will be. And it provides us with hope to see not simply what is — but what is possible with God.