Kindred in Christ,

I look forward to continuing in our series, Rooted: Rediscovering our connection to God and all things. We are also celebrating Black history month. And each week we are looking at different Black hero to help us reflect on what it means to be rooted in God’s grace.

This Sunday we will consider the life, witness, and activism of Richard Allen. Born enslaved in Philadelphia in 1760, he came to the faith at 17 years old after hearing a Methodist itinerant preacher proclaim a gospel that all where equal in Christ and that slavery was sin. He later bought his freedom and became a Methodist preacher and teacher. Allen was hired at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, a congregation that prided itself to be progressive and inclusive. Yet they only allowed Allen to preach at the 5am service that was mostly attended by Black members. And when Black membership began to grow, segregated seating was instituted at the main service. Frustrated with the white supremacy of the congregation, in 1787 Allen and the Black congregants ignored the segregated seating rule and took up space at the center of the sanctuary. They knelt down to pray and refused to stand up until the prayer was over (even though the trustees of the church where physically trying to remove them). After the prayer they stood up in one mass and left the church, never to return.

Historians suggest that this event, which later became known as “The Great Walk Out,” is the first overt protest action by African Americans against racial discrimination in Philadelphia. Allen and the Black congregants went on to start a new congregation in a blacksmith’s shop named Bethel Church. Bishop Francis Asbury (consecrated by John Wesley) consecrated Bethel church in 1794 and ordained Richard Allen as the first Black Methodist Elder in 1799. Eventually, Bethel became the start of the first ever Protestant denomination to be founded by Black people in the United States—the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E.).

Join us this Sunday as we reflect further on Richard Allen’s bold witness and the ways we are being called to be rooted and growing in God’s grace today.

Alongside you,

Rev. Paul Ortiz

Bayard Rustin

Art from Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints book

Kindred in Christ,

I look forward to celebrating Black History Month and beginning our new series Rooted: Rediscovering our Connection to God and All Things. Each week we will look at a different Black hero from our Christian faith and allow their witness to help us reflect on what it means to be rooted and transformed by God’s grace today.

According to John Wesley, we experience divine grace in three aspects: prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace. This week we will explore how prevenient grace is God’s grace at work in our lives before we are aware of it. Indeed, before we can believe or do anything regarding our faith, God is already working towards our healing and wholeness.

Prevenient grace also has societal implications. In the same way God works to heal and change us in our personal lives before we are aware, God’s grace is also working to heal and change systems that oppress, even before society has become fully aware or accepting of these needed changes.

Bayard Rustin’s activism and faith points to this aspect of God’s grace at work in society. An African American leader during the civil rights movement, Rustin helped organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. Among other things, he was a key organizer for the March on Washington. Rustin credited his Quaker faith and upbringing as the source of his nonviolent activism. Rustin was a gay man, which was illegal at the time. Due to criticism over his sexuality, he often acted as an influential adviser behind the scenes.

In the face of segregation, racism, and homophobia, Rustin once said, “We are all one. And if we don’t know it, we will learn it the hard way.”

Prevenient grace is like this. It tells us we are all one, even before we realize it systemically. And we are given the choice to either participate with God’s grace and become as Rustin put it “Angelic troublemakers” for justice, or go against God’s grace and learn the hard way.

I look forward to exploring this and more this week.

Alongside you,

Rev. Paul Ortiz

Kindred in Christ,

Last week we began a new sermon series titled, Serenity: Courage, Wisdom, and the Presence of God, which is all about how to deal with anxiety. We are looking at the book of Proverbs. But we’re not just looking at scripture cognitively, seeing how scripture understands anxiety and serenity. We are also pushing a little bit into the contemplative practice of prayer.

There’s a lot of smart people that can talk about these things, and that is great! But what does it mean to experience these things that we talk about?

One practice we explored last week is the simple Breath Prayer, which will be helpful this upcoming Sunday as we move into the second part of the Serenity Prayer—accepting the things we cannot change. You can create your own Breath Prayers, but here are some prompts:

INHALE:

We are more than our pain.

EXHALE:

I make space for beauty.

INHALE:

I accept the things I cannot change.

EXHALE:

I know the story is never over with God.

Alongside you,

Rev. Paul Ortiz

Kindred in Christ,

Happy New Year! I am excited to witness and participate in God’s unfolding future for us at U Gathering in 2023! And to kick us off, we are beginning a new worship series titled Serenity: Courage, Wisdom, and the Presence of God. As you may have guessed, the series is inspired by the famous Serenity Prayer attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr (above). This prayer has personally shaped my spirituality deeply, as it reminds me that there are things that I cannot change or others that do not deserve my worry. Yet, it also empowers me to have the courage to act when God prompts me to speak up and act for change in our world. And lastly, the wisdom to know the difference saves me from being passive or angry all the time.

Often our lives are filled with anxiety. And the temptation may be to try to solve everything, or just check out from any responsibility at all. Yet, God offers us the deep serenity to remain present and rooted, and to see clearly through the lens of divine wisdom.

As a church we will also gather this Sunday to hear an important update regarding our building project. It will invite us into a month-long discernment process of further conversations and decision making. My prayer is that we can rely on God’s wisdom to accept the things we cannot change and the courage to act together to bring about the change that needs to happen for the sake of our continued ministry in the U District.

Alongside you,

Rev. Paul Ortiz

Kindred in Christ,

I look forward to gathering with you during our upcoming Christmas Eve candlelight service and our Christmas morning celebration! After two years of not being able to gather in-person for worship during the holidays, it will be a gift to light candles next to one another and welcome the coming light of the Christ Child among us. Yet during this season, I am also reminded of how easily it is to miss God’s emerging light. In fact, I find that the four weeks of Advent and our Christmas celebrations only begin to prepare our hearts and minds for what the manger means in our world today.

One of the things that I love about the depiction above, by Everett Patterson, titled José y Maria, is that the more time you spend looking at it, the more you’ll notice. Drawn in literary comic-book style, in shades of purple, lavender and gray, it depicts a gritty street scene with a poor young Latine couple standing on a sidewalk in front of a convenience store at night. The man has a public telephone wedged between his shoulder and ear. He looks worried. His wife rests at his side, resting by sitting sideways on a child’s mechanical pony ride. She holds a hand over her very pregnant abdomen. She looks worried too, and tired.

Are you starting to see the picture? The artist loads it with evocative hints: The woman’s hoodie reads “Nazareth High School.” A sign in the store window, advertising Starr Beer, bears a blue neon star. A poster calls out “Good News.” Around the corner, a lighted sign for Dave’s City Motel reads “NO VACANCY.” And my favorite, in a crack in the sidewalk a hopeful green shoot has sprouted between the man and woman. What other hints do you see?

Join us this Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, in-person and online, as we explore further what it means to witness and welcome the coming of Christ in our world.

Rev. Paul Ortiz