Kindred in Christ,

I am excited to conclude our series Rooted: Rediscovering Our Connection to God and All Things this Sunday. Each week we considered a different Black hero from our Christian faith and allowed their witness to help us reflect on what it means to be rooted and transformed by God’s grace today.

This week we will consider the faith, ministry, and activism of the first Black woman to ever be ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Jarena Lee (1783-1869) came to the faith after moving to Philadelphia as a young adult in 1807 and was inspired by the powerful preaching of Bishop Richard Allen (founder of the A.M.E. church). It was there that she decided to be baptized and identified a calling to preach the gospel.

Initially, however, Bishop Allen refused to grant Lee permission to preach because the church banned female ministers. But Lee was driven by the intensity of her calling, so she began delivering sermons wherever she could—in open fields, town squares, and even in her own home.

Then one day, while at a Sunday worship service at Bishop Allen’s church, Lee noticed that a guest speaker was struggling with his message—so she sprung to action, picking up where he left off to deliver her own testimony. Bishop Allen was so moved and impressed by Lee’s preaching and bold witness that he publicly endorsed her and admitted that he had been wrong about women in ministry. Lee was soon ordained, becoming the first woman preacher in the AME Church.

Lee’s preaching ministry spanned three decades and greatly intersected with her equal rights advocacy and her powerful leadership within the abolitionist movement. Before her death in 1849, Jarena Lee became the first Black woman to publish an autobiographical memoir in the United States, The Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee.  

Join us this Sunday as we reflect further on the witness of Jarena Lee and what it means to live rooted by the same empowering grace.

Alongside you,

Rev. Paul Ortiz

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