Bridging Divides Across Christians for the Flourishing of the City
Just published! Photo Journal from the Woven Consultation, which brings together women to share stories of challenge, overcoming, building relationships, digesting new research about women in ministry, and identifying gaps in support and knowledge.
UniteBoston is grateful for the work that Woven does to bring together women from all different Christian denominations and backgrounds!
Check out the photo journal here! https://woven.exposure.co/woven-consultation
There is an exciting gathering that is taking place this Saturday, June 25! The “Bless the City Prayer Walk and Rally for Community Peace” will begin at 10:00am at 3134 Washington Street, Roxbury, and end with a celebration at Mozart Park in Jamaica Plain.
So, come and join us! We’re having a UniteBoston Meetup at the event. Email me back if you’re planning to come so you can find our group.
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Yesterday, we approved three new members to the UniteBoston Board.
Here we are!
From Left to Right –
This week, UniteBoston features Rev. Jacob Urena as a guest blogger. Jacob is an ordained deacon in The Diocese of Christ the King under the Communion of Evangelical and Episcopal Churches. Jacob currently attends LivinGrace Church located in Johnston Rhode Island, where he also leads a Young Adults ministry known as “The Divergence.” As a native Bostonian, Jacob’s passion is to promote the unity within Churches starting in Boston, and to emit Gods love to all he comes in contact with.
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When attending the Orthodox Good Friday Service of Lamentations, I must say that my views of God and the manner in which he functions has changed. Throughout the year I’ve had the pleasure to visit different Pentecostal, Baptist, Catholic churches but this service was unlike any other. Once I reached St. Mary’s Orthodox Church, I could instantly feel the love they not only had for the people but for God himself. I was quickly greeted and guided by church leaders and common church members to partake and enjoy the service.
The service gave me a fresh outlook on the Christian faith. It involved ancient liturgy, which is something I hadn’t seen in other branches of Christianity, and to me this was very enriching. Everything from the ancient chants to the “tomb” of Jesus placed in the center of the room made out of flowers submerged me in the service and added to my own personal experience of God. The service then was brought out onto the streets of Cambridge. As flower petals were tossed onto the floor, we followed one another closely as we chanted in unity.
To my amazement, I discovered that we were actually on our way to meet with another Orthodox church who joined us in the middle of Central Square to pray and worship together. Worshipping alongside them was the most amazing part for me. People from all ends of the world around me and waves of strangers from the streets began to participate and ask questions. The love of God was being shared with hundreds of people.
On our way back to the church, we then walked under the tomb covered with flowers. I later was told that this symbolized us going from death to life, which brought humility to my heart and filled my heart with passion. The ability for me to participate in these customs was life changing. It left me with so many more questions connected to the meaning behind their liturgy and the symbolism used throughout the service. The service also increased my desire to know God to a greater extent for the level in which I believed to know him wasn’t enough. By the end of the service, I did not feel as if I was a guest or stranger but part of the family, which was amazing because I wasn’t proficient at all in their liturgical customs.
As the service finished, I was astonished by how welcomed I felt, which is so different than the primary mindset that churches have had for so long. We see that people of Christian faith are likely to seclude themselves and limit their interactions to only those of the same church, leaving Jesus and all his teachings in the backburner and clinging on to their understanding. We then create barriers separating one another, yet in reality we are one body in Christ. The reality is that we all have one small piece of the grander knowledge of Jesus and the Christian faith. It is only when we converge together that we expose the masterpiece that God always had in mind.
The unity within the Christian Church is not only beneficial, but is necessary. Scripture continually promotes that God’s desire is for us to function as “one” Church, meaning that Christ came to make us one in Him. Being able to love and worship Christ along my Orthodox brothers and sisters was life-changing for me; I saw people loving God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving their neighbors as they love themselves. If I could feel the presence of God and His love in a church that is very different than my own, then why can’t we all?
Let’s come together and see that the things that separate us as God’s people are the things that will help us come close together. Let’s come together and be one river with many streams, and one body with many parts!
Our 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?
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!”
