Trinity Sunday / Juneteenth Celebration: June 15, 2025 | Laura Meyers
The Dance of Freedom
Readings: Amos 5:18-24
Langston Hughes’ poem, Let America be America Again
(Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Edited by Arnold Rampersad, associate editor David Roessel, Knopf, 1994.)
Grace and peace to you, from the One who is Freedom, Hope, and Joy, Divine!
And let’s invite the grandmother of Juneteenth, Opal Lee into the room with us through her words, “Happy Juneteenth, Jamboree, Come and Join the Fun!”
(This Little Light of Mine)
Today, we gather in the sacred convergence of Trinity Sunday and Juneteenth—a celebration of God’s relational nature and a remembrance of freedom long delayed. One is a mystery often confined to doctrine; the other, a cry for liberation too often confined to memory. But both, if we’re paying attention, are alive. They are dancing through our bones and histories. They are still unfolding in us.
On this day, we sit at the intersection of theology and justice, of memory and movement. And we ask: How do we worship a God of liberation on a day that remembers freedom delayed? What does it mean to lift our voices in praise while the rivers of justice remain dammed?
We live in a nation where freedom is declared but not delivered. Where the sacredness of Black life is not affirmed, where the very idea of Black joy and thriving is criminalized. And yet—freedom keeps breaking in. Joy keeps breaking through. Love keeps insisting.
Juneteenth is a holy interruption. It breaks open our historical amnesia. It reminds us that freedom, like the Spirit, refuses to be bound by human timelines.
The Greek word often used to describe the relational movement within the Trinity is perichoresis—literally, a “circle dance.” Not a hierarchy. Not a chain of command. But a choreography of love. Mutuality. Motion. Rhythm.
That rhythm pulses through our stories today—through Amos’s rage, through Jesus’ declaration, through Langston Hughes’ poem, and through the testimony of one woman whose story is braided into the arc of Juneteenth itself: Opal Lee, the “Grandmother of Juneteenth.”
Opal Lee was just twelve years old when a white mob burned down her family’s home on June 19, 1939, in Fort Worth, Texas—simply because they dared to move into a white neighborhood. The police made no arrests. Her family had to flee. But Opal never stopped believing in freedom.
She would say later, “Freedom is a golden coin—struggle makes it shine.” She would keep walking, keep telling the story, keep organizing until, at age 94, she stood beside President Biden as Juneteenth was signed into law as a national holiday. A journey that began with trauma and fire was crowned with resilience and joy.
This is the rhythm of the Spirit: dancing through devastation, drawing hope from the ashes.
As we reflect on the lesson from Amos…his audience was deeply religious. They kept the festivals. They brought the offerings. They sang the songs. And yet God says through the prophet: “I hate, I despise your festivals… Take away from me the noise of your songs.”
Why? Because these acts of worship were divorced from justice. Their rituals did not lead to righteousness. Their praise did not pour into their policies.
God’s desire is not for performance, but for transformation. Not for solemn assemblies, but for flowing waters of justice.
“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
That verse echoed through the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he preached to a nation that had enshrined segregation and racism in its laws and customs in his “I Have a Dream” speech.[1] And it echoes still today-in Opal Lee’s long walk for justice, and every time we show up for truth.
Let it roll through our streets, through our schools, through our sanctuaries. Let it roll into the memory of Juneteenth.
Juneteenth is not just a Black holiday—it is an American altar. It holds both celebration and lament. It remembers that no freedom is guaranteed. It honors the resilience of a people who sang joy into the soil of suffering.
On June 19, 1865—more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation—enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, were finally told they were free. Freedom declared. Freedom denied. Freedom delayed.
Opal Lee would later teach her great-grandchildren about this delay as they gathered together on their knees before her, beneath a blooming tree. She would tell them about Gordon Granger, who arrived with Union troops to proclaim, at long last, “All slaves are free.” She would tell them about the dancing and jubilee, the watermelon and sweet potato pie, and the red punch—those vibrant red foods once prepared by generations of her family’s hands, but denied during servitude, now reclaimed in freedom. She would remind them: Juneteenth is freedom rising.
Juneteenth is a sacred reminder that liberty, without truth and justice, is not liberty at all. That even after the law changes, hearts and habits often lag behind. That the arc of the moral universe is long—not because God is slow—but because we are.
We live in a world shaped by the refusal to reckon—with slavery, with genocide, with patriarchy, with ecological harm. We inherited systems that rank worthiness, that other entire communities, that hoard power.
And yet—God still moves.
God moved in Galveston. God moved in the Civil Rights Movement. God moved in Ferguson, where Michael Brown’s death ignited the Black Lives Matter movement[2]; God moved in Minneapolis, where George Floyd’s final breath became a global cry for justice[3]; God moved in Charleston, where nine Black saints at Emanuel AME Church were murdered at Bible study[4]; and God moved in Buffalo[5], where a grocery store became a site of racial terror and lament.
God moved when Opal Lee walked across America with 1.5 million signatures in hand, saying, “None of us are free until we’re all free.”
God moves still—in every cry for justice, in every march, in every prayer.
When Jesus stood up in his hometown synagogue, he didn’t read a psalm of comfort. He read a manifesto of liberation.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” he said,
to bring good news to the poor,
to proclaim release to the captives,
recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
And then, he sat down and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Today.
That’s a dangerous word. That word nearly got Jesus thrown off a cliff.
Because “Today” doesn’t wait. “Today” demands action. “Today” disrupts comfort.
Juneteenth echoes that urgency. It says: freedom cannot wait. Justice cannot wait.
Reparations, recognition, healing—they cannot wait.
The gospel is not future-tense. It is now.
Langston Hughes understood that. He wrote:
“America never was America to me.
And yet I swear this oath—America will be!”
He gave voice to the dissonance between promise and practice. He spoke as the poor white, the Black laborer, the Native displaced, the immigrant betrayed. He declared the truth many knew but few named: that the dream of America was not yet real for all its people.
And yet—he held on to hope.
“We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers…
And make America again.”
That is the voice of resurrection. Of grit and grace. That is the echo of Amos and Jesus. The call to redeem not just souls, but systems. Not just beliefs, but bodies. And it is also the work of the Church.
If we claim to worship a Triune God—Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer—then our worship must be creative, redemptive, sustaining, and disruptive! Our theology must move beyond abstraction into action.
If we only ever imagine God as distant, or as white and male, as removed from the pain of the world—what kind of disciples will we become?
But if we name God as River and Rock, as Friend and Liberator, as Breath and Fire and Companion—then maybe we will become a Church that dances with the Spirit, that sings freedom songs, that does justice not out of guilt but out of joy.
Because that’s what the Trinity is: joy in motion. Love in relationship. God in the thick of our sorrow and hope.
That is the Trinity. That is God. Not distant. Not abstract. But in the room. In the rhythm.
This is the God that Langston Hughes longed for. The God Amos cried out to. The God Jesus proclaimed. The God Opal Lee walked for. The God of Juneteenth.
So today, I leave you with this:
You don’t need to explain the Trinity.
You don’t need to memorize the math of Three-in-One.
You just need to feel its rhythm—and step into the dance.
Let Juneteenth be more than memory. Let it be momentum.
Let our worship be more than songs—let it be solidarity.
Let justice roll down like waters.
Let righteousness rise like a river in flood.
Let the dream live—not just in slogans, but in laws.
Not just in prayers, but in policy.
Not just in sermons, but in systems changed.
Let the Church be the Church again.
Step into the Trinity’s flow: where truth is told, where chains are broken, where love is always moving.
Because the Spirit of the Lord is still upon us.
And today—yes, today—this scripture is still being fulfilled.
Before I close, I want to offer a few acknowledgments and the deep love and gratitude I carry…
First, to my family—Scott, Anna, and Shelby. Thank you for your steadfast love, your patience, and the countless ways you made space for me to step into this season of field education. Your support, your presence, and your belief in me have been the quiet strength behind every sermon written, every visit made, every moment of growth. I could not have done this without you.
This season has reminded me—over and over again—that nothing meaningful is ever done alone. For that, I am profoundly grateful.
Thank you, Nat+, for being a steady guide. Your wisdom, encouragement, and spaciousness allowed me to show up fully—not as someone needing to prove, but as someone becoming who I was beautifully and wonderfully made to be. You made room for me to grow, to experiment, to wrestle with Spirit, and to offer what I had. You honored my voice and helped me listen more deeply for God's.
To the beloved community of St. Peter’s: thank you for holding me with grace and warmth. Thank you for holding Scott, Anna, and Shelby, too—for welcoming all of us into the rhythm of your life. You created a space where we didn’t have to earn belonging. You simply gave it. And in doing so, you reminded me that the Church at its best is not a performance, but a practice of love in motion.
To the ancestors of St. Peter’s, whose stories and struggles for justice we remember and carry with us—thank you. Your witness lives on in this place, in our prayers, in our liturgies, and in every act of compassion and resistance that grows from this soil.
To each one of you who let me into your story, who shared a prayer or a pause or a tear with me during these months—thank you. You have changed me. You have become part of me.
As Prentis Hemphill writes, love rarely forces its way to the front of the conversation about change, but it is always there—quiet, steady, essential. That is what I have found here. And that is what I will carry with me.
You will remain in my prayers and in my heart as I continue on this path of ministry and unfolding.
With love and gratitude, and as Opal Lee would say, “Happy Juneteenth Jamboree! Come and join the fun!”
Amen.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Michael_Brown
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_George_Floyd
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting