Sermon by Pastor Seth - June 18, 2025
Sermons
Stewards of Liberation
American theologian, Walter Bruggemann, calls it a “song of creation.” Holding the humility of humanity in tangent with the exalted place God has given us, Psalm 8 echoes the poetics of our origins. Espousing a holy ecology, the words of this Psalm bear resemblance to the account of creation we find in the book of Genesis — reflecting wonder and awe at God’s handiwork along with the responsibility God places upon humanity despite our smallness and finitude.
A collection of songs, poems, liturgies, and petitions, the book of Psalms is emotionally charged, from praiseful thanksgiving to painful lament. The still waters of Psalm 23 exist alongside the desperation of Psalm 130, giving voice to the spectrum of human emotion, our experience of the Divine, and in the case of our Psalm for today, a challenge of participation.
A hymn of praise, worshipful and humbling in its reminder of our ordained charge, as we hear these words in community today, I invite us to consider how Psalm 8 calls us to action.
Congregational Response
How does Psalm 8 call us to action?
- Creation is imbued with the majesty of God, we should act accordingly
- The disarming wisdom of child-like vulnerability and faith
- Speaking healing words, not destructive words
- We all have a voice that deserves to be heard and boundaries deserving respect
Theological Reflection
The mob grew larger and larger. Gazing out the windows of their newly bought home in Fort Worth, the then 12 year old Opal Lee and her family began to grow anxious as a stream of angry white Texans gathered on their front lawn. After recently relocating from Marshall, Texas, the predominately white neighborhood of Fort Worth’s Sycamore Park did not take too kindly to a Black family moving in. On June 19, 1939, their malice came to a head, leaving Opal’s family no choice but to flee their home as a mob of 500 people tore the house apart. The message was clear: we don’t want you here. In the wake of the destruction, rendering their home uninhabitable, there would be no arrests, no compensation, no justice done for a Black family enduring Jim Crow America. Opal’s parents were simply forced to go back to work and buy a new house, familiar with such tragically common hate and routined denial of accountability, leaving an indelible mark on their 12 year old little girl.
Though the trauma of surviving this horrific display of racially charged violence at such a young age was lasting, Opal Lee studied hard in school, graduating from Wiley College in 1952 with a degree in elementary education. From then on, she committed herself to her work — inspiring the next generation as a teacher within the classroom and an activist without. Over the course of her life, Opal would become involved in multiple community organizations intent on preserving the history of Black Americans, fighting for civil rights, and advocating for the marginalized. She started her own nonprofit some years later, spearheaded the development of a community food bank in Fort Worth, and was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Though she still goes by Opal, her continued efforts well into retirement have garnered her another endearing title in recent years: the “Grandmother of Juneteenth.”
When the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863, Union troops (including a great many Black soldiers) traversed plantations and cities of the Confederate territories declaring all those enslaved to be free. It was a momentous day in history, but for the quarter of a million enslaved persons in the westernmost Confederate controlled state of Texas, news of freedom would not reach their ears for another 901 days. On June 18, 1865, two months after the surrender of Robert E. Lee, a detachment of 2000 Union soldiers led by General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and, on June 19, freed the last enslaved Americans who had been living under the brutality of bondage for an additional two and a half years. June 19 would come to be known as Juneteenth and regarded as America’s second Independence Day, eventually recognized as a federal holiday back in 2021. We can thank Opal Lee for that.
In a past interview for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Lee recounted her experience in Sycamore Park in 1939, saying, “The fact that [her home was destroyed] on the 19th day of June has spurred me to make people understand that Juneteenth is not just a festival.” Tied to this day as both a celebration and sobering reminder of the work still left to be done, Opal Lee began campaigning in 2016 to have Juneteenth recognized as a national holiday. Her campaign included a poignant demonstration, walking two and a half miles a day in multiple cities from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C. — representing the two and a half years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the freeing of the last enslaved persons in Texas. Her efforts attracted national attention, and due to her perseverance, in 2021, President Joe Biden signed into effect Juneteenth as a federally recognized holiday. Opal Lee was invited to the Oval Office to witness the signing.
Opal currently resides in a house built by Habitat for Humanity on the same lot where her home was destroyed back in 1939. To recognize her extraordinary contribution to the Fort Worth community and the nation at large, Habitat sold the house to her for just $10. Now 98 years old, despite a recent hospitalization, the Grandmother of Juneteenth still plans on walking two and a half miles this year — echoing the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Maya Angelou, when she says, “We have simply got to make people aware that none of us are free until we’re all free, and we aren’t free yet.”
In Psalm 8, we encounter a hymn connecting the majesty of God’s creative work with humanity’s charge to partner with God in its care. As a whole, it casts quite a positive valuation on human beings, implying that our place is but a little lower than that of the divine — pairing the humbleness of our dusty beginnings with the exaltation of God’s trust in us. The text reads that we are to rule, but we must not forget that we are still of the earth, of the ground, made of the same stuff as the rest of creation. Our rule is not one of top down domination but bottom up support with the enduring, steadfast love of a sovereign God serving as a model for how we are called to treat creation ourselves, including each other.
The care we are meant to emulate is not a distant, one and done political stunt to check a box. It is a persistent practice, a constant nurturing, a responsibility of continued stewardship. That’s what God means by ruling. When I think about Psalm 8 in the context of Juneteenth and the horrific history of a country who has a habit of repeating it, I’m left with the conviction that we cannot claim care for the works of God while our siblings remain unfree. We cannot be stewards of creation without being stewards of liberation.
For slavery might have been outlawed, but Jim Crow would be hot on its tails, the lynching of Black bodies a favored pastime of those who refused to see the human hanging from a tree. Jim Crow might have ended with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would still be assassinated 3 years later. We might have elected the first Black president, but George Floyd would still be suffocated to death under the knee of police brutality in 2020. Efforts might have been made towards restitution, but legislation will still be passed to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; books pertaining to critical race theory will be banned; accurate education on the history of this country will be punished; and people of color will still represent a disproportionate amount of individuals who are incarcerated.
We are not clockmakers setting the pin of liberation to step back and watch the gears spin for that is not how freedom works, leading us down a short road to complicit complacency. Liberation requires a constancy of nurturing, standing up and standing with again and again in every generation until freedom is the default, equity the standard, and accountability the expectation. And it is not so yet. This is the call not of a specific group of people, denomination or culture, age, skin color, or creed. It is the charge, the responsibility of all of humanity to be stewards of a liberated creation, and God says join me. Will we answer the call?