Transformed for Dignity & Freedom
Transformed for Dignity & Freedom
June 21, 2026
Minister: Rev. JT Smiedendorf
A sermon related to Romans 12:1-2 and Juneteenth
Download a printable PDF of this sermon here.
CENTRAL FOCUS:
That we must affirm human dignity and freedom in order to answer God’s call to the love that is justice.
“So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate worship. 2 Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can discern what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.”
These are the words of our ancient tradition.
May the Living Word of God in Scripture be alive within us, among us, and beyond us.
Every June 19th, they jubilantly march from the old Galveston, Texas courthouse to Reedy Chapel AME Church, ringing bells and passing out flyers saying, “All slaves are free!” and singing, “Before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave!”
They hold hands. They praise God.
Reedy Chapel was founded in 1848 and became a place for enslaved Africans to worship in dignity. On June 19, 1865, when federal troops came to Galveston to enforce emancipation, Reedy Chapel was one of the first places that announcement of freedom was made. The Juneteenth holiday was born.
Plymouth Congregational Church was closed this last Friday for The Juneteenth holiday in celebration of the end of slavery in 1865 and to honor the survival and resilience of Black people in our nation. Many say that Juneteenth marks our country’s second Independence Day. Although it has long been celebrated in the African American community, this monumental event remains largely unknown to many white Americans.
Indeed, I didn’t know anything about Juneteenth growing up. That’s a sign of a social system where racism suppresses the full dignity and freedom of citizens of color. They are left out of the national story. Such a lack of full dignity and freedom has led to significant disparities of outcome between racial groups in our country in education, healthcare, job opportunities, and law enforcement among others.
Rev. Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of sociology at Georgetown University who titled his book of a few years ago, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, says in regard to this disparity,
The most radical action a white person can take is to acknowledge this denied privilege, to say, “Yes, you’re right. In our institutional structures, and in deep psychological structures, our underlying assumption is that our lives are worth more than yours.”
Juneteenth reminds us to stay focused on the continued need to say Yes to full human dignity and freedom wherever it is lacking, for that lack is not God’s intention for any of God’s children. Any such lack is a spiritual sickness and an injustice no matter the lens of such discrimination. Racial discrimination, of course, is one of the worst forms. Our faith calls us to respond to such deficits by seeking healing and justice so that all have dignity and freedom.
This inequity and oppression are born of a distortion in culture. And culture was the issue that Paul was speaking to in our morning’s Scripture from the letter to the ancient church in Rome. That is, culture as “the patterns of this world,”—those culture patterns of empire that Paul says we must not conform to. Paul writes to remind his listeners who are seeking to follow the Way of Love of the Risen Christ that the conventions in the culture of the empire are not loving and not mature in the Spirit.
Instead, Paul calls the faithful to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds,” which is about seeking an alternative consciousness, another way of being and seeing that is different and more aligned with Divine Love. In our day, my friends, that includes not conforming to any belief or system in which one group is less than. It means that we as a whole can thrive only if we stay out of the business of ‘other’-ing people. It means that we each who are seeking a spiritual path must draw the circle of human solidarity wide and level.
How many here have heard of Paul Revere? How many have heard of Wentworth Cheswell? On December 13, 1774, Cheswell rode with Paul Revere to warn Portsmouth citizens of the approach of two British warships. Cheswell was listed in the census as white, but was considered what was known in his day as “mulatto” because his father, Hopestill Cheswell, was a bi-racial, free-born black man, and his mother Catherine (Keniston) was white. The Cheswell family name and all descendants are linked to Richard Cheswell, a former enslaved person.
I never heard of Wentworth Cheswell growing up. This is an example of the frequent incompleteness of ‘other’ awareness when one is a member of the group that is culturally centered, like me. It is a subtle yet powerful example of white supremacy being lived out at the systemic level of education where other racial histories and people are muted and hidden. As more diverse voices and histories are included, the distortions of white- and male-centeredness are lessened. We all get more human as the mural of humanity is painted more fully. Most importantly, human dignity and freedom can be shared more fully in our world.
Michelle Alexander is a well-known author, lawyer, and activist who wrote a bestselling book called The New Jim Crow, where she detailed the way in which the legal system often incarcerates people of color in disproportionate numbers, disenfranchising them and again benefiting from their free labor. Her book came out just about the time that Barack Obama was being elected President. She spoke to packed crowds and received much appreciation. Some people even talked of a “post-racial America.” And yet, she says, when walking off the stage to enthusiastic applause, she would hear a voice in her head that said, “…all sound and fury, signifying nothing.” She found herself depressed, having trouble getting up in the mornings and, at first, brushed it off as the exhaustion of her work and of mothering 3 small children.
Just at that time she was called by Dr. Vincent Harding to come speak at my alma mater in Denver, the Iliff School of Theology. Dr. Harding, who had written Reverend Dr. King’s April 1967 Beyond Vietnam speech and was a longtime activist in the black freedom struggle, was a professor emeritus at Iliff. Alexander, after she again received much applause after her presentation at Iliff, walked off the stage with that same sinking feeling.
Later, as people were leaving, the elder Dr. Harding pulled her aside and said, “Thank you, daughter, sister, niece Michelle for your work and your research and for indicting this system. But I think there is a deeper message here that you are struggling to name and claim, perhaps even for yourself. And I think that deeper message is what Jesus was trying to say when he said, “What you do unto the least of these you do unto me.” Alexander, who had grown up in a family that eschewed organized religion, came to realize the truth of what Dr. Harding had spoken, that her effort was related to more than building political movements, but was about awakening to the spiritual truth of who we are and who we are to one another—the truth that we are One.
Dr. Harding then became a mentor to Alexander in the last years of his life. When Alexander would talk to him on the phone, she would want to talk to him about the old stories of the black freedom movement and about current strategies. In response, Dr. Harding would ask her, “Have you been quiet today? Have you cultivated stillness? Have you learned to listen to the sound of the Genuine within you?” Dr. Harding continued to call her back not only to the spiritual nature of the movement, but to the spiritual practice necessary to pursue a movement seeking human dignity and freedom.
This is where the Apostle Paul’s words come back again, “…be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can discern what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.” The transforming is a spiritual process that helps us to know deeply our own and our fellow humans’ full dignity. That spiritual connection to the One Divine Mystery and the oneness of humanity is what it will take to overcome cultural patterns that limit the human dignity and freedom of some. We cannot use the tactics and tools of the culture of empire to accomplish our own or another’s freedom. Our consciousness is transformed and renewed in the Spirit of Christ. Out of that Spirit we can see and act for the dignity and freedom of all humanity.
This coming week, the Violins of Hope project will visit Plymouth church on Wednesday. There will be a display of violins during the day and then a talk at 6:30 and a free Minnesota Sinfonia concert at 7:30. The Violins of Hope is a project of concerts using a collection of violins, violas and cellos collected since the end of World War II. Many of the instruments belonged to Jews before and during the war. Many were donated by or bought from survivors; some arrived through family members.
In the words of the Violins of Hope website, “Our violins represent the victory of the human spirit over evil and hatred… All the Instruments have a common denominator as symbols of hope and a way to say: Remember me, remember us. Life is good, celebrate it for those who perished, for those who survived. For all people.”
That is a statement to uphold human dignity and freedom.
And such a statement of human dignity and freedom was also made as Minnesotans stood in solidarity and service for their neighbors during Operation Metro Surge this past winter, which clearly and belligerently targeted people of color and those whose first language was not English, regardless of their legal status.
“…Be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can discern what God’s will is.”
This is our invitation of faith. For when we do, we can uphold human dignity and freedom even in the face of the forces that would deny it to some because of race or religion or ethnicity or sex or gender or whatever category and label.
For beyond such limitations is a transformed consciousness and a transformed world. There we will find a great and wide and level circle of human dignity and freedom that “is good and pleasing and mature.”
AMEN