oneinchrist – UniteBoston

Jun 20 2015

A Call for United Worship for the Tragedy in Charleston

Churches are joining together in united prayer in response to the tragedy in Charleston.

As UniteBoston, we too stand alongside the African American community mourning the loss of our nine brothers and sisters. We grieve for the families who have experienced loss through the shootings in Charleston, and we also grieve for the prevalence of hatred, violence, and racism in our nation. Lord, have mercy.

This Sunday, June 21st, the Imago Dei Community is inviting the Christian community to participate in the One Church Liturgy. They write: “This liturgy is a site dedicated to assist the church to stand together in unity using a common liturgy as we raise our voices as one in times of lament, grief, tragedy and celebration. It is a resource for churches to mobilize in our common faith in Jesus.”

If you will join in this prayer gathering this Sunday, please post a statement on the Facebook event page that they have set up.

As UniteBoston, we affirm the promise of hope in the midst of trials and suffering. Noel Castellanos from the Christian Community Development Association writes, “At this time of lament, we grieve, embracing the promise of Jesus, ‘Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.’ We are not paralyzed by fear, hatred and violence, but we rise with courage and determination to take action: we pray; we mourn; we organize; we advocate; we restore; we enter into the pain of those who suffer for the sake of His glory.”

Apr 14 2015

A Romans 12 Vision for Unity

Kelsey is a second year intern with Cru campus ministry in Boston. She’s also serving as a UniteBoston Rep on the MIT campus. This year she will be trailblazing a new internship in the northeast called Freedom58, a partnership between Cru and International Justice Mission, to bring Biblical Justice into Christian conversation at universities.

One of my co-workers has pointed out that I’ve caught the “unity bug”. I caught it as a senior at Cornell University, sitting beside my Jewish friend along with 600 Christians and non-Christians in the arts quad for an inter-fellowship Easter service. Two years later, it is Holy week again and I find myself in a small crisis of faith, wondering if this bug I’ve caught is from the Lord. So I asked Him to show me what unity is supposed to look like, and He responded with Romans 12.

“A LIVING SACRIFICE” – OBEDIENCE

The chapter begins, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” When I look back into the Old Testament, asking what a “holy and acceptable” sacrifice looks like, it is clear that God’s desire is for obedience.

It feels, though, like obedience is a bad word in the church today. We obey to an extent, but we are so afraid of legalism that we easily justify disobedience in the name of freedom.

But dream with me for a moment. What if we were all to be true, living sacrifices? David says “the sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite heart.” The Hebrew word shachah, translated to “worship”, means to lie prostrate. I imagine the best physical description of a broken and contrite heart would be shachah. What if we were all to live our lives prostrate before God, obedient to such an extreme that we let go of our pride, our fear, our personal convictions, our own dreams and aspirations? What if, like Abel, we really were to withhold nothing from God? I see a church, prostrate at the throne of God, with one voice singing “holy, holy, holy is the Lamb.”

“MANY MEMBERS, ONE BODY” – HUMILITY

Next, Paul warns everyone “not to think of himself more highly than he ought, but to think with sober judgment.” The next verse describes a body of many members, paralleling the one Church body comprised of many gifts.

The day before Easter this year, we hosted an Easter Arts and Music Festival at MIT. It was the dream of one visionary student. We didn’t assign it to a particular group or fellowship, but simply said, “we want to worship Jesus and see people saved”. I have never seen anything like what resulted.

In the days leading up to the event, five different universities, three local churches, three campus ministries, and four national ministries gathered on MIT’s campus to pray for souls to enter the Kingdom of God. It didn’t matter that some were speaking in tongues while others were praying “hail Mary’s”. The prayer team, prophet team, food team, worship team, hospitality team, and tree-climbing set-up team all came with no agenda but to humbly serve the vision of one student who wanted to glorify the Resurrected King. One man’s words to me were “I’ve been here from set up to take-down, and I have never seen this before. Every single person’s heart is united. Everyone wants to praise Jesus.”

GENUINE LOVE

At the end of the night, the student who organized the Easter festival was so overcome with gratitude, she commented, “I wonder if they all realize how much I love them.”

Having communicated with all the separate teams, I had to laugh at her and ask, “Do you realize how much they all love you?!”

That night I learned that unity doesn’t happen for unity’s sake. Our goal wasn’t to unite people. It was so incredibly simple- to love Jesus. Because the motivation was clear, genuine, and right, the love that was directed upward at Jesus seemed to rain down on us all, warming our hearts with a true and genuine love for one another.

Romans 12 starts with God’s loving mercy and ends with our brotherly love. There’s the key to unity- it starts and ends with love.

Jan 28 2015

Pope Francis on Christian Unity

In honor of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Scott Brill from the Institute for Christian Unity compiled these quotes from Pope Francis:

Photo credit: NBC News

Vespers: “Christian unity will not be the fruit of subtle theoretical discussions in which each party tries to convince the other of the soundness of their opinions. The Son of Man will come and will find us still arguing. We need to realize that, to plumb the depths of the mystery of God, we need one another, we need to encounter one another and to challenge one another under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who harmonizes diversities and overcomes conflicts; to reconcile our differences.”

Colloquium: “There is no unity without conversion. Religious life reminds us that at the center of all search for unity and, therefore, of every ecumenical effort, is first of all conversion of heart, which entails the request and the granting of forgiveness. To a great extent it consists in a conversion of our look itself: to seek to look at one another in God, and to be able to place oneself also in the other’s point of view: here is a twofold challenge linked with the search for unity, whether within the religious communities or between Christians of different traditions.

There is no unity without prayer. Religious life is a school of prayer. The ecumenical commitment responds, in the first place, to the prayer of the Lord Jesus himself, and it is based essentially on prayer. One of the pioneers of ecumenism and great promoter of the Unity Octave, Father Paul Couturier, used an image that illustrates well the bond between ecumenism and religious life: he compared all those who pray for unity, and the ecumenical movement in general, to an “invisible monastery” that gathers Christians of different Churches, of different countries and continents. Dear brothers and sisters, you are the first leaders of this “invisible monastery”: I encourage you to pray for Christian unity and to translate this prayer in your daily attitudes and gestures.

There is no unity without holiness of life. Religious life helps us to be aware of the call addressed to all the baptized: the call to holiness of life, which is the only true path to unity. It is evidenced with incisive words in the Conciliar Decree Unitatis Redintegratio:”May all the faithful remember that, the more they promote, rather live in practice the unity of Christians, the more they will take care to live a life in greater conformity with the Gospel. In fact, the closer their communion is with the Father, with the Word and with the Holy Spirit, the more profoundly and easily they will be able to render mutual fraternity” (n. 7).”

Jan 25 2015

Why Should I Care About Race? Aren’t We All Just Christians?

Photo credit: CS Monitor

This month, as we remember the life and death of Martin Luther King Jr., given up for reconciliation and racial justice, and as I read about Black Lives Matter protesters who tie themselves to concrete barrels and lay their bodies across I-93 rush hour traffic to wake the Boston area up to the fact that injustice is a greater problem than inconvenience, I’m struck again by Jesus’ unnerving call: “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Regardless of your politics and view on current protests, I think most of us can safely say that we have never put ourselves in the path of physical death in order to save the life of another–particularly someone who’s not “one of our own.” A professor recently reminded my New Testament classmates and me, “As you follow Jesus, your life will take on the shape of the Gospel narrative.” Martin Luther King’s death certainly reflects that.

I am also amazed, as I read through the New Testament this week, at just how radically committed the early church was to cross any racial and ethnic line, to preach the good news that Jesus is King of all. They did this against their own better, rabbinical judgment, against centuries of careful study of Torah, and against their own bloody history of protest to save Jewish identity from Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and Roman colonization. And as they did so, they fought and squabbled about whose rules they would follow and which parts of whose culture to keep. Early Jewish Christians had a lot to lose, and they made very uncomfortable compromises to become “one in Christ” with Gentiles. (Note Acts 1:6: Even after Jesus’ resurrection, pre-sending of the Holy Spirit, the disciples were still imagining the Kingdom of God to be a Jewish political entity. The revelation of the true meaning of “Messiah” by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost opened up a theological can of worms. The New Testament attests to the apostles’ worm-wrestling over the next fifty years!). The insistence of Paul that Gentiles did not need to be circumcised to be “children of Abraham” was a hard-won battle that didn’t stick easily. Conversely, Gentiles took on some dietary restrictions in order to enjoy table fellowship with Jewish Chrsitians. Thus, the very strange unity of “Jews and Greeks” would have caught the world’s attention. Saying, “It’s Jesus, the Messiah from Nazareth, who does this… for everybody” in that atmosphere, would have been electrifying. His love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit changes our ability to really see and hear one another.

As I read Jesus’ commands, and read through the Acts narrative and its accompanying epistles, I don’t feel I’ve come anywhere near being faithful to the Gospel’s call to let my privilege and its accompanying insularity be crucified with Christ. But I have to wonder: today, in a country where Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week, where we have a centuries-long history of white Christians committing acts of terror against Black and Native people (among others), how can the Church live out a startling “Jew and Greek” unity? How do we knock the foundation out from beneath our very real dividing walls?

I do know that destroying strongholds of disunity doesn’t happen through ignoring differences like culture, race and class. The famous statement in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek…for you are all one in Christ,” in its context communicated a spiritual equality, not the loss of “Jewishness” and “Greekness.” Nor does unity happen by mildly “agreeing to disagree”; it happens when we have the courage to do whatever it takes to get close and embrace those whom God has called but we have failed to see.

Here are a few thoughts on practical ways to begin, and I share them with you that we might journey together in these things that I am just beginning to learn.

1) Visit a church where you feel uncomfortable.
Speaking directly to the white folks reading this: we sometimes don’t even know what it feels like to be “in the minority,” racially speaking. Given the huge role race has played in the history of our nation, we can’t afford to ignore this fact. Practice displacing yourself by attending a church where “the outsiders” (to your theology, to your ethnicity, to…) hold the microphone.

2) Ask the questions you’re embarrassed to ask.
Many of us assume we understand what it might be like to be in another’s skin, or, even more often–we’re too embarrassed to ask. We don’t know the rules. We feel silly for not knowing how to refer to another’s ethnicity (“Is it Native American? Indian? First Nations?…. I don’t know what to call them”), or not really remembering where someone is from (“somewhere in Africa”). That’s okay. Sensitivity and learning “what not to say/ask” is important, but embarrassment and apology-making is a big part of Gospel training. Do take the time to ask someone in the know, admitting your stupidity, and humbly asking for the honor of hearing another’s story, remembering it’s a great privilege to listen. Particularly for white folks: “Color blindness,” which is often our de facto orientation, does not honor the way persons of color often experience the world. It’s better to ask what might feel like an awkward question, like, “How have you been processing Ferguson?”, than to fail to love by our silence.

3) In 1 & 2, be prepared for the work of the Holy Spirit to change your rules.
The anger, lament, and sense of foresakenness of our brothers and sisters is the sound of the Spirit’s prophetic voice, and hearing these things should change us. It was inconceivable to Peter, when he was given the vision of the “sheet of unclean animals” in Acts 10:9-16, that God’s rules were changing. It was only by seeing the work of the Holy Spirit among Cornelius’ household that Peter was able to defend an amendment of the “circumcision rule” at the contentious Jerusalem council (see Acts 15:6-11 and context). We can talk about our brothers and sisters in theory, but until we witness the Spirit’s work in them up close, well–we’re missing out on the glory of the Gospel!

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Hilary Davis is working toward her MDiv at Gordon-Conwell Seminary and learning to listen in her part-time staff position with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s Native Ministries.
Her very occasional bloggings can be found at: hilarykdavis.wordpress.com
If you take issue with, or would like to ask any questions about, any of the above, Hilary can be reached at hilarykd@gmail.com

Dec 18 2014

Begin with the End in Mind

Last year, Chris White hosted a dialogue at Harvard sharing about race. In this week’s UniteBoston blog, Reverend White encourages us to “begin with the end in mind” as he shares his story on racial reconciliation.

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As the end of 2014 approaches, it is important that we take time to look back on the year. My hope for unity in Boston and America is that we will “begin with the end in mind.”

We learn by stories, so I will share mine. I was adopted from Bogota, Colombia into a white family. My Mom is Polish and my dad is English, hence the last name White. They say we have a castle in London but I have yet to see it. I grew up in Peabody. If you aren’t from Boston, it is pronounced as one word really fast, “Peabody.” My skin color isn’t white, but I grew up white; I lived in a white neighborhood and was brought up Catholic which is predominantly white. I also experienced white privilege, which to me is better schools, safer neighborhoods, and higher paying jobs.

As a person of color, I also experienced racism. I remember when I was studying at UMass Amherst, I was rollerblading and fell. I started bleeding and across the street there was a white woman. She stopped, stared, did not say a word, and walked away. It hurt not just the pain from the cut but that I was ignored.

Some say you are born into what you believe. For me, that statement rings true. I often wondered why I was brought up in Boston with a mom who’s family was Catholic and part of my dad’s family who was Jewish. My mom thought it would be a good idea to experience both religious traditions. It probably would have been if I didn’t encounter Christ when I was in college.

It wasn’t until I read The Purpose Driven Life that I understood better why God made me the way He did and put me in America. “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.“ (Acts 17:26)

I enjoyed my Catholic upbringing and had an amazing priest named Father Bruce. During my second year of college, I met some friends who were Mormons and inspired me to learn more about God. To make a long story short, I made Jesus my Savior and became born again.

I was ordained by the American Baptist of Massachusetts in 2009. We do many things together to reflect unity in Boston. We have joint services with blacks and whites, we help minorities build stronger congregations, and we provide funding for minority children to come to Camp Grotonwood.

In his famous book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey encourages us to “begin with the end in mind. Picture you are in heaven, and think about what that looks like as you sing to God, “And they sang a new song, saying: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.” (Revelation 5:9)

Heaven is a place where all the colors bleed into one. If heaven is going to be blacks, whites, Catholics and Protestants worshiping together and living as one, wouldn’t it make sense to do ministry the same way?

My hope for the churches of Boston is that we would do more together. Yes, the scripture in John 17:23 calls us to be one. But what does that one look like and who are these people in the organizations making the decisions? During my time there were many older white men in leadership. I hope that the leaders would come from many different backgrounds and ethnicities.

I also hope that the Catholic and Protestant Churches would work together, as well as various ethnic groups. As we work together, think about those who are worshiping with you. If you are trying to get black people to come to your events make sure you include some Gospel.

I’d also encourage churches to share your wealth! Many black churches don’t have the funds that white churches have because of slavery and discrimination. Whenever possible, we need to support black missionaries and minorities. Minority staff are not going to have as much access to funds that white staff have available to them. I know this personally from my experience working with Intervarsity and Campus Crusade for Christ; the diversity of the staff wasn’t as strong as I would have liked, but I am thankful that both organizations are working on this.

Finally, I’d encourage Christians in Boston to be intentional as they live. No one likes to be ignored and people of color feel that way a lot. It is important to say hello and acknowledge them. Stretch yourself and your network by attending a black church or white church, by helping out at a Catholic event or a Protestant service. One of the best things you can do is to have a friend of the opposite race. Be like Jesus and break down the racial and denominational barriers. Begin with the end in mind!

To learn more about Chris White’s ministry, visit revchrisopherwhite.org or email: revchristopherwhite@gmail.com, like him on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ChrisWhiteMinistries

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