In August 2010, I moved outside of my hometown of Lawrence, KS, for the very first time in my life to New Haven, CT. It was there where I worked with the Episcopal Service Corps in an emergency shelter and transitional housing program for folks experiencing homelessness. My six roommates and I lived at a beautiful church situated on what seemed to be a border of affluence and poverty, of have and have not, of wealthy and poor. This massive gap was never as apparent as when you walked out of our door. Looking left, the grand campus of Yale and looking right, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the country. Only a matter of blocks away in physical distance and yet innumerable miles apart in suffering, racism, financial well-being, and more. It was on that border that the church stood; it was on that border that we lived and prayed and served.
I hadn’t actually planned to take that year of my life to join the ESC; I had thought all along I would be starting seminary in August of 2010. But, when I went to meet with the then Bishop of Kansas, he wanted to me to “move anywhere and do anything.” Part of me wishes I had moved somewhere exotic or lived somewhere abroad for that time. But, in so many ways, New Haven, CT was foreign. I had never seen poverty like that, I had never known of the racism that kept primarily black and brown people in such poverty, and I had my eyes opened in myriad ways.
Today is Juneteenth and I am left thinking about so many experiences in my life, especially that year. Juneteenth is celebrated as the day that enslaved people in Texas first heard that they were free but the promise of freedom that day was never fully realized. The promise of freedom given that way had been held back from those folks for years and it is not yet realized even in our own day. It is not yet realized because the greed and brokenness that brought about enslavement still exists in too many ways today. The border that I noticed in New Haven is a border that lines Omaha and every city in this world, it lines our hearts and souls, it separates countless lives throughout time and space. If the promise of freedom of Juneteenth is to be realized it will mean people who look like me set aside ourselves and cross the border.
On this day, I am reminded that across the border is exactly where Jesus calls us to go and is exactly where Jesus is to be found. All around us and within us are borders that put one kind of person in and one out, that lets one kind of person have and the other to have not, that means one person is safe to thrive and one person is just hoping to survive. The privilege I carry is that I never had to know that there was another side of the border. I could have lived my whole life by staying on the safe and wealthy and thriving side but to do so would miss where Jesus most readily is found, it would ignore where Jesus bids I go. And then, to get to work for a freedom, a thriving, an abundance that is the promise not yet realized but awaiting and given to all of God’s beloved.
I pray, for me and for you, for the grace and strength to cross the border.