UniteBoston

Bridging Divides Across Christians for the Flourishing of the City

Christ is Risen!

photoUHZ6HESHOur blogger this week is Steven Hardy, who is a UniteBoston Rep in the Cambridge/Harvard Square area. Steven attends St. Paul’s Parish and is a self-described  “arm chair theologian and historian.” Below, Steven presents some great insights on the unity of the church after attending his first Orthodox liturgy service.

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For the first time this year, I decided to attend the Pascha (Easter) celebrations at an Orthodox church. A group of us from UniteBoston had participated in the Good Friday service of Lamentations the previous evening, and I felt as though it would be incomplete to lament the crucifixion and burial of Christ with this community, and not celebrate his joyful resurrection with them. Being a Western Christian, I had already undergone the Lenten fast and the Feast of the Resurrection, but one can never mark this great mystery enough, right?

Image Credit: holycrossbookstore.com

Going into the service, I fully expected the many differences in the Eastern liturgy to stand out. I was eager to experience these differences and ready to make note of them. Basically, I suspected that I would be more of an observer than a participant. However, what drew my attention was the many things I saw that were in common with my own liturgical background. Many of the prayers, verses and responses, and even the placement in the liturgy were the same or very similar to my own background. Some of them were in the very same translations that I’ve known my whole life. As is often the case, my expectations were utterly off base when it comes to the work of God, through the Holy Spirit.

Another thing that I was very conscious of, being at an Antiochian Orthodox Church, was the current strife taking place in Syria. I noticed that, though many were not of Syrian decent, those who are, were at least one generation removed from their immigrant forerunners. The blood of Christian martyrs is being spilled there far too frequently. These Christians martyrs are not just Orthodox, but a mix of denominations. They are being persecuted and murdered due to their shared faith in Christ, causing the blood of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant martyrs to be mingled together in union. As Pope Francis told Catholicos Karekin II of Etchmiadzin, the Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church, “Just as in the ancient church the blood of the martyrs became the seed of new Christians, so in our day the blood of many Christians has become the seed of unity.” The Pope was referring to both the Arminian Genocide that took place under the Ottoman Empire 101 years ago, as well as the current state of affairs.

We often use the term brother and sister when referring to Christians of other denominations. I suspect, however, that we often mean something more akin to cousin, or friend. As I witnessed the many things in common with the Orthodox in Cambridge, as I was made to feel welcome at their festive post- liturgy celebrations, and as I thought on the witness of the martyrs, I can’t help but to feel a much closer bond to these people who are indeed my brothers and sisters in Christ.

One day I hope that we can finally remove the things that stand in the way of full union with one another. We have a rich diversity in Christian faith traditions right here in the Greater Boston Area. We share in one Baptism into the living body of Christ on Earth. We all proclaim Christ crucified and risen. I would very much like to celebrate this shared faith together, in full communion so that we can reply with one voice, “truly He is Risen!”

Photo from UniteBoston Meetup at Orthodox Good Friday Service
Photo from UniteBoston Meetup at Orthodox Good Friday Service

UniteBoston Holy Week Pilgrimage

“It’s my favorite worship service of the year.”

 

In my conversations with other Christians, I keep hearing this phrase repeated about various gatherings taking place around the city during Holy Week.

 

To this end, this year UniteBoston is starting a “Holy Week Pilgrimage” as an opportunity to join together with other Christians throughout Boston to set aside time to remember the significance of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.

 

We know that it can be intimidating to go to a new church, so each of these gatherings will be “hosted” by a member of the UB team who will meet you beforehand to sit with others in the Christian community during the service.

 

To join the UniteBoston Holy Week Pilgrimage, indicate which services you are planning to attend by clicking here. The UB Host will email you about details for meeting up before the service. For questions, email Kelly at Kelly@uniteboston.com

 

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25)

 

This year, as Christians throughout Boston draw deeper in our understanding of the cross, may God also fill this city with His resurrection life.

UniteBoston Holy Week 2016
Sunday 

Palm Sunday Procession and Mass in Extraordinary Form

10:00am, Cathedral of the Holy Cross, 1400 Washington Street, Boston

 
Tuesday
Taize Prayer
 
7:00pm, Paulist Center, 5 Park St, Boston, MA 02108
 
Taize is a simple and calming ecumenical evening prayer service, including scripture readings in multiple languages, candlelight, meditative singing, and time for silence. 
Wednesday 

Foot Washing Service

7:00pm, Union Baptist Church, 874 Main Street, Cambridge

This service incorporates a foot washing to remember the posture of humble servanthood that Christ demonstrated to us. Bishop Brian Greene will be the speaker.

Thursday 
 
Maundy Thursday Service 
8:00pm, Old South Church in Boston, 645 Boylston Street, Boston
This service combines modern jazz music with ancient liturgy of Tenebrae, where the stories of Jesus’s passion are read, and after each reading a candle is extinguished. The service ends in darkness, and the congregation listens to the repetition of 39 dissonant chimes of low handbells, symbolizing the suffering of Jesus on the night of his arrest.

 

Friday 
Black Ministerial Alliance Good Friday Service
12:00 – 3:00pm at St John Missionary Baptist Church, 230 Warren Street, Roxbury
Hear from seven different pastors from different denominations throughout the city on the seven last words of Christ before his death and resurrection.

 

Gospel Without Words – Living Stations of the Cross 
3:30pm in Copley Square
In an arresting display of creative street theater and public art, Trinity Church Boston is presenting “Gospel Without Words”—living Stations of the Cross with participants from local congregations. Bus stops and crosswalks, as well as Copley Square’s half-price theatre ticket booth and the Boston Marathon pavement medallion will serve as the modern-day setting for the retelling of the suffering and death of Jesus.

 

Saturday
The Great Vigil & First Mass of Easter
6:30pm, Church of the Advent, 30 Brimmer Street, Boston
The Great Vigil of Easter is the most dramatic and moving service in the entire church year. It is a service of waiting — waiting in darkness for light to dawn, waiting in the tomb of death for life to be born — then receiving that life in baptism and the Holy Eucharist. Join us to celebrate the first mass of Easter with lights, bells, incense, hymns, and shouts of joy! Check out the article here!

 

Easter Vigil 
8:30pm, 874 Beacon Street, Boston
This service includes a choir, original music compositions, Scripture readings that outline the history of our salvation, an opportunity to reaffirm our baptismal vows, and the celebration of Holy Communion. Followed by a dessert reception that will last well past midnight! (Anglican)

 

Sunday
 
1:00 to 4:00pm, Ramsay Park, Boston
Join us to serve the community with worship, prayer, food , clothes, song, dance and the Word!
 
All week
“Sacred Spaces”
 Monday through Saturday at Grace Chapel Lexington and Grace Chapel Wilmington
Sacred Spaces: a self-guided retreat experience is designed to help you find time and space to reflect in the days leading up to Easter. Times vary slightly; click on the link for precise times at each campus.

 

Updates from the Institute for Christian Unity

Scott Brill is a good friend of ours at the Institute for Christian Unity – Here is an exciting update from them about what they have planned for the upcoming year!

“The world needs to know Jesus. We must proclaim Him without any pause, together. The division among Christians is the fruit of our sin, and it is a scandal and our greatest impediment for the mission for which the Lord has called us: announcing the Good News of the Gospel.”

So said Pope Francis in a letter he sent to a gathering of Evangelicals & Catholics this past September – at which I had the privilege of representing the Institute for Christian Unity. For me, Francis’ words capture the essence of our work and the passion which drives me to keep going at this in the face of many challenges. It resonates deeply with our vision: “To raise up a new generation of ‘prophetic ecumenists’ who seek to both confront and heal disunity in the Body of Christ and live as a sign of love for that Body, so that the world would know the good news of Jesus” And I hope it stirs something in you as well.

Over the past year, that vision and passion has motivated me to teach about reconciliation across historic church divides in a number of settings and to create networks between Catholics and Evangelicals through smaller gatherings like the one mentioned above. I also spent a week in April out of my comfort zone at the National Workshop for Christian Unity, helping my good friend and mentor John Armstrong establish the first-ever participation of Evangelicals at that conference.

That vision and passion has motivated my co-Director Vito Nicastro to spend months of hard work behind the scenes to bring about a remarkable joint letter from Cardinal O’Malley and Bishop Hazelwood of the ELCA that even got a shoutout in the Boston Globe. It has motivated our Fellow Matt Crane to create a unique community grass-roots ecumenical forum in the Boston area. Over the past calendar year they have thoughtfully engaged a number of powerful topics including racism, human sexuality, the role of women in the church and the current refugee crisis – all in a space of mutual respect and love. And all of us have been involved in mentoring several young undergraduates and seminarians, all of whom are discovering their own call to prophetic ecumenism.

Though each of us has another full-time ministry, our goal for next year is to continue to expand the impact of the Institute. Some of the ways we’d like to do that include:
• Working with Vision New England to develop more missional partnerships between Evangelicals and Catholics.
• Hosting a multi-day Christian unity gathering in the greater Boston area in the fall of 2016.
• Following up the joint letter by creating structures for Lutherans, Catholics and other Christians to come together for study, prayer and service
• Expanding the WEE Forum to more communities

Warmly in Christ,

Scott Brill
Founding Fellow and Co-Director

Video: The Trinity & Ecumenical Relations

Kelly Steinhaus, Executive Director of UniteBoston and student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, recently spoke at the Boston Theological Institute’s 2016 Orlando E. Costas Consultation on World Mission & Ecumenism .

The title of her presentation and paper is: “Mutual Indwelling: The Perichoretic Nature of the Trinity as a Model for Ecumenical Consciousness and Praxis.”

Watch her 3-minute presentation below!

Transcript:

God within God’s self is radically relational.

In 749, John Damascene began to propose the term “perichoresis” to describe the “cleaving together” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The fellowship of the Godhead is so intimate that the three persons not only embrace each other, but also enter into and dwell within one other in a divine dance.

The Trinitarian life is also our life; as followers of Christ we are called to become an “image of God” and take on God’s way of being. Yet throughout the 2,000 years of its existence, Christianity has splintered time and again, to the point that some estimate more than 33,000 Christian denominations. This disunity is a scandal and a public contradiction of the gospel.

Today, our parishes largely function as isolated autonomous entities, with some city blocks having multiple Christian churches with nearly identical goals yet little to no communication between them. This isolation leads to growing negative views and polarization between different cultural expressions and ideologies present in the Church. This is not who we are called to be, and this is not the way of the Trinity.

My thesis is that the self-giving nature of the Trinity must be reflected in our relations with other Christians. Christian unity is a process by which the church is brought to maturity. In going beyond our own Christian tradition, we find that our negative beliefs about other groups are overgeneralized and untrue. Thus, Christian unity reveals our hidden biases and matures our faith personally and corporately.

What we know about the Trinity must be reflected in our ecumenical praxis. We must go beyond our siloed independent church walls, towards those who are ideologically and culturally different than us. Ecumenical initiatives have traditionally consisted of inter-denominational worship events and high-level dialogue, but have neglected to build the depth of relationship between all Christians demonstrated by Trinitarian communion.

I’m the founding director of an ecumenical movement in Boston called UniteBoston which seeks to nurture these relational connections. We have a website and newsletter as an infrastructure for communication for Christian events happening around Boston.

Each fall, we also coordinate 10 nights of worship gatherings designed to reflect the diversity of Boston’s Christian community and promote ecumenical understanding.

Finally, we coordinate a team of UniteBoston Reps who work with pastors to identify shared missional goals and collaborate on joint service projects. Last October, over 200 Christians throughout Boston – Catholic, Orthodox, Mainline Protestant, and Evangelical – served together on twelve service projects to tangibly demonstrate the love of Christ.

Iron sharpens iron, and we have found that through rubbing shoulders with other Christians, our perspectives are broadened and our love for one another is deepened. As the being-in-one-another nature of the Trinity emerges within us, we are becoming the Church and Bride of Christ that Jesus prays for, so that the world will see God’s true character and love. Thank you.

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Today begins the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity!

John Armstrong from the Act 3 Network shares with us more about the history of this movement. Check out his blog here: www.johnharmstrong.com

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is an international Christian ecumenical observance kept annually between January 18 and 25. It is actually an octave, which means the observance lasts for eight days.

The observance began in 1908 and was focused on prayer for the church unity. The basic idea, and the January dates, were suggested by Father Paul Wattson, co-founder of the Graymoor Franciscan Friars. Watson conceived of the week beginning on the Feast of the the Conversion of St. Paul and concluding on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Peter. The dates and ideas actually were a variant of the Protestant version of these Catholic celebrations. (Wattson was himself a former Anglican priest.) In the mid-1920’s Protestant leaders proposed an annual octave for unity leading up to Pentecost. (Many local communities also celebrate this time and offered joint prayers for unity.) Pope Benedict XVI “encouraged its observance throughout the entire Roman Catholic Church.”

What is interesting is that this observance began in Catholic circles but once it jumped boundaries it took new forms and meanings. Abbé Paul Couturier of Lyons, France, who has been called “the father of spiritual ecumenism,” (a model that has profoundly influenced me and one also openly embraced by Pope Francis) had a slightly different approach than Father Wattson. He advocated prayer “for the unity of the Church as Christ wills it, and in accordance with the means he wills.” By this Abbé Couturier enabled other Christians with differing views of the Petrine ministry to join in this movement of prayer. In 1935, he proposed naming the observance “Universal Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.” This proposal accepted by the Catholic Church in 1966. Abbé Couturier’s message influenced a number of Catholic leaders thus today this is the direction Catholics and Protestants take in their celebration of this week of prayer.

Locally in Boston, you can take part in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity by attending:

Below, Protestant and Catholic members of the UB community joined to watch the Spotlight movie together last Sunday and discussed implications for ministry in Boston.


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