unity – Page 77 – UniteBoston

Jun 22 2016

This Saturday: Bless the City Prayer Walk and Rally for Community Peace

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.

I met up with Pastor Marcos Cisterna yesterday to hear more about the event. When he was 17, Pastor Marcos prayed about organizing a prayer march, and now this dream is coming to fulfillment. He has been amazed to see God’s favor to gather a diverse cross-section of churches throughout the city. Now there are over 35 churches coming!

Marcos is passionate about Christian unity, and he believes that “unity is what brings us into the power of Jesus Christ.” In the Prayer & Rally Walk for Community Peace, people are coming together to say that “we would like to see the violence in our city stopped so that everyone can live in unity, peace, and safety.”

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.

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you” (John 14:27). May God bless each of you this summer, and show the Christian community together into the way of Christ’s reconciling peace.

Click here to read the invitation for the Community Peace Walk.

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Kelly Steinhaus

Team Leader, UniteBoston

www.uniteboston.com

Jun 18 2016

The Church for Orlando

We are grateful to our friends at the Institute for Christian Unity who compiled this list of gospel voices offering prayers and compassion for the tragedy in Orlando:

The Church is the body of Christ in the world. The Church is called by God to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to the whole world, and to do so in word and deed. This proclamation is always urgently needed and never more so than in the instance of human brutality and suffering.

We offer to you Gospel voices–voices for light in darkness–speaking for the Church in Boston to our suffering neighbors in Orlando, to the LGBTQ community, to the victims of gun violence, to the Muslim community and to the poor in spirit everywhere.

What follows are a series of links to statements by leading voices in Boston’s Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelical/Pentecostal and Mainline Protestant communities as well as a special link to practical action the Church (your church!) can take on behalf of the Orlando victims and the LGBTQ community.

http://www.bostoncatholic.org/Utility/News-And-Press/Content.aspx?id=32619

http://www.hchc.edu/about/news/news_releases/mass-shooting-statement

http://www.grace.org/deeper-closer-wider/praying-for-orlando/

https://www.robly.com/archive?id=a033f5cf5ec356ecc0ef6d57e910e6dc

Also, here are a few great articles recommended by the Lead Them Home ministry:

Scott Sauls: A Pastor’s Reflection on Violence Toward the LGBT+ Community
Russell Moore: After Orlando, Can We Still Weep Together?
Pope Francis: Reflections from Pope Francis
Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition: 5 Ways Christians Can Respond to the Orlando Shooting
Jen Hatmaker: Don’t Say Nothing
Wesley Hill: If the Church Were a Haven
Lead Them Home: What Your Church Can Do

Finally, check out the article “There is Gospel to Preach Here”, with twelve Christian leaders across the country serving in a variety of roles tell the stories of how they responded to the massacre and offer resources to help others responding to tragedy.

May 11 2016

One River, Many Streams

13064689_267616503582637_8989441086470772257_o 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.

Image Credit: http://www.stmaryorthodoxchurch.org

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.

Image Credit: www.stmaryorthodoxchurch.org

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!

May 06 2016

Christ is Risen!

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!”

Photo from UniteBoston Meetup at Orthodox Good Friday Service

Apr 23 2016

Reconciling Love

Today, we have Megan Lietz as a guest blogger with UniteBoston. Megan is a research associate at the Emmanuel Gospel Center and is passionate about unity in the body of Christ. Today, she shares with us about some insights into the reconciling love of Christ that destroys barriers between God’s people.

In Ancient Near Eastern Jewish culture, it was believed that salvation was only for Jews or those who conformed to the legal requirements of Judaism. Gentiles were generally seen as lost and distinct from Jews in belief and culture. However, Jesus had a heart for both Jew and Gentile. He desired and made a way for them to be one in Him. For example, Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17 pleads for unity among his followers and Ephesians 2:13-18 explains how Jesus’ work on the cross tore down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. Despite the barriers that his followers erected between themselves and believers different from them, Jesus calls them to unite themselves with those who were seen as “the other.” This was viewed as inappropriate by the leading Jews. Eventually, the acceptance of the Gentiles became the belief that set early Christianity apart from other sects of Judaism.

Within the church today, there are many divisions. It’s easy for us to judge those from different cultural or Christian traditions. Instead of embracing people as brothers and sisters, we can label them as “the other” and practically exclude them from our interactions within the body of Christ. This behavior is in stark contract to what Jesus did, sacrificing his own body, so we could be one and experience the fruits of unity.

Today, let us pray that we and the ministries throughout our region will become mindful of the ways in which we separate ourselves from our fellow believers and, in doing so, disrespect the reconciling work that Jesus did on the cross. Let us pray that we see our brothers and sisters as Jesus does, covered by his blood and part of his family. May we act in unity because what divides us has been overcome by Jesus’ work on the cross.

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