Honoring Juneteenth at Reservoir Church

June 14, 2024

On June 19, 1865, over two months after the Confederate surrender, U.S. troops in Galveston, Texas announced to over 250,000 enslaved Black people in that state, that they were now free. The next year, churches in Texas began celebrating June 19th as a day of liberation, calling it Juneteenth. From there, celebrations spread and grew over the years, to become what some people call America’s second independence day. It is a day to commemorate the end of the enslavement of Black Americans and to celebrate Black culture and history. 

In 2021, the United States adopted Juneteenth as a national, federal holiday. Some people celebrate this as another important accomplishment for equity and inclusion. It’s important to have days to tell the truth about our country’s long, slow progress in achieving its stated ideals of liberty and justice for all. And it’s invaluable to have opportunities to center and celebrate the culture and stories of Black Americans. Other people have more complicated feelings about the holiday. Juneteenth was recognized as a federal holiday, just as parts of America have been eliminating and censoring Black history and culture from public schools. Most of the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement remain unaddressed. I’ve heard more than one friend express: we wanted justice, and instead, we got another holiday.

Reservoir Church seeks to honor both aspects of this holiday. We see Juneteenth as an opportunity to celebrate and center Black people and culture and take joy in our victories in achieving greater freedom and flourishing in our lives and communities. After all, our vision is that many people in Cambridge, Greater Boston, and beyond are connecting with Jesus and our church in deep ways. We embrace the good news that is often centered in African American theology; that God’s call for humankind is not only for personal spiritual uplift and hope in the afterlife but for greater liberation, justice, and thriving for our spirits, our bodies, and our communities in this life. Juneteenth is an opportunity for us to celebrate this vision of the Kingdom of God as Beloved Community for us all. 

Juneteenth isn’t only a celebration of freedom stories in our past. It’s an opportunity to reflect upon the ongoing realities of injustice in our society and the freedom stories we want to struggle to achieve. Since our founding in 1998, Reservoir has been a multiracial church. Over the years since then, we have made increasing commitments to equity, diversity, and inclusion, as we seek to be a community of profound belonging for all of our diverse members and as we seek to embody God’s big dreams for more just communities and for diverse expressions of human kinship and worship. 

Juneteenth is one of the many Sundays when we think about these big dreams. On Sunday, June 16th, we will celebrate Juneteenth through the food we serve, the music we sing, and in the spoken word poetry around the freedom journey of one of our Haitian American members. A new friend of Reservoir, Reverend Darrell Hamilton, will preach at our 9:30 am in-person service on “The Invisible Man” and at our 11:00 am online service on “God in the Ghetto.” 

Join Us for Our Juneteenth Celebration Service!

On Sunday, June 23rd, we will announce some of the ways we continue pursuing equity, diversity, and inclusion as a church, including how we will plan for more of this in our Sunday worship services in the year to come. This church will continue to honor the stories, the culture, and the contributions of all our diverse community members, as we try to forge a beautiful community of belonging for all people. We will continue to strive with God and one another for communities of greater freedom and justice for all people, as we work toward the birth of a new age of Beloved Community, when all humans live together in peace and equity, as brothers, sisters, and siblings in God’s good creation.