The Naked Truth | June 21, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton
- The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
(I dedicate my message to my friend, Michael Sharpe who is fearless in facing this Naked Truth, with unbridled enthusiasm, with love, with dignity and with hope. Thank you, Michael.)
Unwavering sincerity says that [a person] should always recognize the fact that [one] lives always in the presence of God, always under the divine scrutiny,
and that there is no really significant living for [a person],
whatever may be his/her status,
until he/she has turned and faced the divine scrutiny.
Here all [people] stand stripped to the literal substance of themselves,
without disguise, without pretension, without seeming whatsoever.
No [one] can fool God. From God nothing is hidden.
The opening words from Dr. Howard Thurman come from the book, Jesus and the Disinherited in the chapter entitled, Deception. The recent murder of a baby in the parking lot of a Walmart brought me recently to this place…the place where we stand stripped to the literal substance of ourselves…a place where pretense is gone…where the protection of deception no longer holds sway. This Naked Truth…this raw, excruciating place may cause us to cry out as I did, He killed my baby… And it was while personally dealing with this agony and rage that I came across the song by Quaker singer/songwriter/cellist Anna Fritz, entitled Send Somebody:
She cried, please God send somebody, send somebody to help us now.
She cried, please God send somebody, send somebody to help us now.
And God said, why not you, child, why not you?
And God said why not you, child? I…I send you.
We are brought to the moment of naked truth where we can only call out, Please God! Please help us…send somebody. When God answers that we are the ones we have been waiting for, we are brought to that moment of our high resolve that Thurman spoke of...under the scrutiny of that all-pervading spirit of oneness…the source of life that each of us can find within the altar of the soul.
And this is where I found myself on the occasion of Juneteenth this year…mourning the brutal, life-denying act…one that was reportedly accompanied by racial comments that were meant to highlight the degrading and devaluing of this baby…this beautiful expression of life.
It seems, in a way, that this Juneteenth holiday was eclipsed by everything else that is going on, but the realities of our current world make it extremely important to pause…to reflect on the profound significance of this date. Commemorating the delayed notice of the emancipation proclamation that essentially freed African Americans who were enslaved, Juneteenth took place on June 19, 1865, two years after that proclamation. By this time, 10s of thousands of enslaved people had been brought to Texas in order to keep them enslaved. There were on the first June 19, an estimated 250,000 enslaved individuals in Texas. These same people did not even know that the war was over…that Lee had surrendered two months earlier. Although this date was celebrated by some since that day as the actual Independence Day for all Americans, it wasn’t until 2021 that President Joe Biden signed the order that made Juneteenth a federal holiday. The major impetus for this order came from a woman named Opal Lee who has been called the Grandmother of Juneteenth. Ms. Lee was born in Marshall, Texas and at the age of 12, she experienced her house being burned down by an angry white mob. The date, June 19, 1939. Her family had moved into a mostly white neighborhood and they were not welcome there. This was part of what drew her to the holiday, which she lobbied for most of her life. She also insisted that Juneteenth was not just a one day event, but should be celebrated all the way to July 4th.
The significance of this celebration of freedom should not be taken for granted. After all, the institution of slavery lasted 250 years. Emancipation has only been a reality for 160 years and of course we know that its legacy has been brutal…reconstruction, lynching, disenfranchising, racial violence, Jim Crow, racial oppression and murder…even up to the present day as seen by the recent murder of a baby and perhaps especially the current reality of the fascist reign of the current leadership of this country…a fascism that is strongly reminiscent of the fascist leaders of the past. Desperate measures are called for and there is not one single person that will be sent. We must understand that we are, all of us, called. As in the passage from Isaiah 6:8:
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
We are, each of us, being called upon to listen to the sound of the genuine resonating within our souls at this time of contradictions. Amid the celebrations of Juneteenth all over the country where each of us has the opportunity to face the Naked Truth of this country, there has also been the opening ceremony of the Obama Presidential Center and Library in Chicago also happened Thursday, as well as numerous Juneteenth celebrations all over the country on Friday. We are also celebrating the Summer Solstice today. According to one of my teachers, Starhawk, the Solstice is the longest day and shortest night of the year, when light reaches its peak and begins to decline. We celebrate the Solstice to honor the balance of light and dark that together create the rhythm that moves the world. She continues by saying,
So, let’s light the Solstice fires, and dance for a shift that will bring us into balance, with the earth and with one another, so that all…lives may thrive!
I like her enthusiasm. She uses both her spiritual self and her activist self to address our current reality. She reminds us of the idea of balance and of the nature of existence as light and dark together speaking of our own San Francisco as a place of oppression and brutality, as well as activism and resilience.
This is what we can continue to meditate on today. It is also Father’s Day, a time to honor the mixture of strength and gentleness that is indicative of a beautiful fatherly heart. Author Jeffrey Masson wrote of fatherhood as, the greatest joy and the greatest expression of love of which the human male is capable. I believe this can be true for those without biological children…I have experienced a fatherly presence with so many in my life. Right now, I have the privilege of watching my son, a magnificent father, interact with his children on a daily basis. Actually, both of my sons are the main caregivers for their children. What a joy! My hope for them is that they are able to reflect on this time and on their capacity for compassion and love…that all fathers, as well as, those whose lives have been touched by fathers will take the time at this turning…this balancing…this time of being called to listen deeply for the sound of the genuine…that place where we stand in our naked truth. Thurman believed…
…that in the Presence of God there is neither male nor female,
white nor black, Gentile or Jew, Protestant nor Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist,
nor Moslem, but a human spirit stripped to the literal
substances of itself before God.
This human spirit is, of course, also part of the broader reality of all life…the life that includes the heavens and the earth, the rolling sea, the sun and stars, the stone and the stream, the tree and the sparrow. May we pray that we are able to hear the voice of the all-pervading presence calling our name…calling us to deeper communion with each other and with the literal substance of ourselves. May the God of our Weary Years be with us today…guide us in this time of horror and time of joy…this time of lies and time of truth. May the harmonies of liberty find us today, so that we may rejoice, in concert with our pain and our tears. We are indeed the ones…as long as we have breath.
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