Truth and grace

Today is Juneteenth, our newest federal holiday, honoring the day the last of the enslaved people in this country heard the good news of their emancipation. The day provides an opportunity both to reflect on American freedom and on our checkered past. The telling of American history has been especially fraught in recent times, with partisan warring over what should and should not be told. But history is always being rewritten and rethought: think of the last family gathering you attended, when old stories were told by one and corrected by another. We all remember things differently, depending on our situation in the story.

It shouldn't be difficult for Christians to acknowledge uncomfortable truths about ourselves. Our theology teaches that every one of us is fallen and in need of redemption, after all. And we have a witness in our scriptures of how to tell that story. If our ancestors in the faith were writing the Bible to make themselves sound good, well, they certainly didn't succeed. Salvation history is a long catalogue of failure and compromise, not heroism and upstanding morality. And yet God continues to love the people and forgive them, time and again. We do better when we tell the whole, real story. Then we can truly honor the good, repent for the bad, and begin again. Happy Juneteenth!