sign in sign up
<<
Home , Evensong, Order of the Holy Cross

We call ourselves liberal Anglo-Catholics. What do we mean? Series of homilies for 2016 Advent 1 - Sunday 27 November 2016 Parish of Saint Matthias (Bellwoods) – Mother Joyce Barnett O House of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord! - Isaiah 2:5

When someone fell through the floor in our beloved jewel of a building last February, we locked the doors so that it couldn’t happen again. I know that some people thought that we should simply do a quick repair and keep going. But what kind of responsibility would we have, if it happened again a second time? Someone else might also be hurt. Also our wardens would incur the liability on our behalf, and I am pretty committed to making sure that neither of those things happen. There is money in the Diocesan coffers that will go a long way towards helping us fix our little church, making it stronger and ready for a future of sustained use. But they want to know a couple of things. Do we have a good sense of what God is calling us to as the parish of St. Matthias? And are we putting in all the resources that we can? We know that the Diocese sees our potential as a centre for ministry and mission in our neighbourhood. We are in a strategic location in the city, we are a diverse community and we are dedicated to God’s mission at St. Matthias. Most of us remember how we responded when Mayor Rob Ford and City Council were threatening to save money by closing Bellwoods House. We responded on many levels, letter writing, calling councillors and making deputations at City Hall. We are missional people. But we have become a bit too insular over time. Understandable when we’ve felt like we had to run as fast as we could just to keep the lights on. But now, to save ourselves and the Anglican presence in this neighbourhood, we have to step out in faith. I spoke to Fr. David Hoopes, the prior at the Order of the Holy Cross about our need to get in touch with and develop our sense of being called to God’s mission. He told me that the danger for Anglo-Catholics is to confuse Anglo-Catholicism with Ritualism. Our ritual must always be in service of feeding us for our work in God’s world. He told me that sometimes people ask him why he is so faithfully present at the clinic for the homeless at the Cathedral. This participation for Fr. David, comes from his faith, his confidence that he is doing what he is called to do with the people that God loves. Our call to mission and ministry comes from our faith, from our beginnings as Anglo- Catholics. I could begin our history with the early church of course, but for today, we‘re going to start in Victorian England. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the church and the state in England were interconnected institutions. But what kind of church was it, bound up in Victorian strictures and morality? Church was for the most part, well-attended. The was not celebrated very often. It was Morning and Evening Prayer. Anglicans were pretty staunchly anti-liberal and anti-. There were some good works happening because evangelical Christians believed in charity. They worked for prison reform and for the abolition of slavery. They were partners with the Crown in expanding the British Empire, as the Christian Missionary Society went out from England along with the army. There is a famous painting in the National Portrait Gallery in London that was painted by Thomas Jones Barker that shows Queen Victoria giving the bible to an ambassador from East Africa. It is called The Secret of England’s Greatness. The in England on the other hand was less influential and at the time, more concerned to preserve the privileges that the church enjoyed. In the 1830s, all institutions were in upheaval, mostly in reaction to the downfall of the monarchy in France. The responded by reorganising dioceses and revenues. But more was needed. The needed to rediscover their spiritual life. As the evangelicals continued their good works supported by a fundamentalist reading of scripture and an uncomplicated theology, in Oxford something very old and very new was brewing. The men, and at this point it was all men, dedicated themselves to a different kind of revival. They wanted to bring holiness back to human culture. To plumb the depths of and bring out the intensity and spirituality of the early church. John Keble, Richard Harrell Froude, Edward Pusey, and the one we know so well because he would jump ship in 1845 and join the Roman Catholics, John Henry Newman. Sometimes, these folks were known as Tractarians because they communicated their ideas using tracts. This was not a new idea, many people published tracts, but these were the first that were written by Oxford Dons, for educated people. There were 90 tracts in all and they were thought to be brilliant. They would concentrate on one topic, whether church services were too long for example (No is his answer, and he quotes St. Paul telling us to pray always!) Or more often a tract concentrated on one article in the creed and illuminated it. People found new hope and meaning in them and at only pennies each, the tracts were affordable. During this period, 1830-1845, there was little thought of trying to create innovation. Neither were they trying to appeal to working people. But country clergy were starting to listen and to pay attention to theological questions. After 1845, a more progressive side of the new movement began to emerge. These theologians were listening to the Christian Socialists and to Frederick Dennison Maurice, who, although he was not an Anglo-Catholic, but rather more , had famously said, “There is no true without Socialism, and no true Socialism without Christianity.” The original Oxford dons continued to preach and teach under the leadership of Pusey. But the departure of Newman had been a blow. The Church of England was still terribly prejudiced against the Roman church. There were no more tracts. This is of course, the time period of our birth here on Bellwoods Ave in 1873. We were founded to be the mother-house for Anglo- Catholics in Toronto, to be close to Trinity College in Bellwoods Park, but also to be a church for the poor and working class people of this neighbourhood. It was built from the trees that were cut down to make room for the church and with pews that would remain forever free and unencumbered by that blight on the Anglican landscape, pew rents. In those days, as in England, most of the church was evangelical and Anglo-Catholics were looked upon with great suspicion. We were here in time to receive the first Anglican sisters when they arrived from England, because no other Toronto parish would allow them to live within their bounds. Meanwhile in England the Guild of St. Matthew was founded based on Anglo-Catholic and Socialist principles. They were concerned to have beautiful and spirit-filled , with frequent Communion. They were committed to the study and remedy of social and political ills in light of the . Their theology was particularly focused on the incarnation. For God loved the world so much that God chose not only to be with us, but to be one of us. Guild members fought injustice wherever they found it: they called for a reduction in the hours of work, for decent housing, fair taxation, free education for all. And they did not neglect what they saw happening overseas. They opposed

2 forced labour in East Africa. I appreciate that they were known for attacking injustice wherever they found it and they proposed remedies. Ordained Guild members chose to go to the poorest and most difficult parishes, believing that God was calling them to minister among the miners, the dock workers, the unemployed. Unlike the good works of the Victorian evangelicals which was a charity model, the Anglo- Catholics were being called to live in the midst of the people they were called to serve. As Bp. Poole would say to us, “Anglo-Catholics have dirt under their fingernails.” We are called to live out with this principle today. It can be difficult to be with people where they are. Sometimes it is easier to feed people to invite them to eat with us. One of my favourite members of the Guild of St. Matthew was Stewart Duckworth Headlam. He was regularly in trouble with his because of some of his teachings and some of his actions. He was particularly vehement against the traditional model of hell, and preached an all-loving and all-forgiving God. His bishop also disliked Headlam’s support of actors and the stage, especially when he stood bail for Oscar Wilde, who had been charged with the crime of homosexuality. Headlam believed that his teacher, F. D. Maurice was correct when he taught that the Kingdom of God would be a just and egalitarian society. Not long after this, a woman named Vita Scudder who had studied in England came to the United States and was teaching at Wellesley College. She was a Anglo-Catholic Socialist and a Companion of the Order of the Holy Cross. She nearly lost her job in later years because she supported the mill workers strike in Lawrence . Literature about her merely says that her primary relationships were always with women and so we recognize that she was probably a lesbian. In 1889 the somewhat more respectable Christian Social Union was formed. They had a similar theology to the Guild, fed by a deep spirituality of the sacraments, a critical reading of scripture and were preaching an incarnational theology. They also believed that Christian faith has to do with every aspect of life and human society. They preached that we are called to look outward, that our concern is for the welfare of everyone everywhere. Fr. Radclyffe Dolling said about his work in the Portsmouth slums of London, “I speak out and fight about the drains, because I believe in the Incarnation.” That God came and dwelt among us is one of the central beliefs in Anglo-Catholic spirituality and moves us to be passionate about the well-being of all creatures and creation. Our faith draws us to the where we find community and Jesus among us. We are fed with spiritual food and sent back out into the world to continue our work. This is the core of what it means to be Anglo-Catholic. ______

In the worship of Jesus really present in the Sacrament of the Altar before you, all human hearts can join, and especially secularists, for when you worship Him you are worshipping the Saviour, the social and political Emancipator, the greatest of all secular workers, the founder of the great socialistic society for the promotion of righteousness, the preacher of a revolution, the denouncer of kings, the gentle, tender sympathizer with the rough and the outcast who could utter scathing, burning words against the rich, the respectable, the religious. Stewart Headlam “Sacramental Socialism” 1890

The Eucharist is the principal act of Christian worship because it embodies the central truth of the Christian faith: God has pitched God’s tent in our midst, in our own flesh, redeeming our nature, binding us to one another, and filling the whole creation with the effulgence of God’s glory. John Orens “The Anglo Catholic Vision”

3 Advent 2- Sunday 4 December 2016

Parish of Saint Matthias (Bellwoods) – Alison Kemper For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. - Romans 15:4

These are hard days. As a Canadian born in the USA, with American family, I am terribly distressed by what is going on. The legitimization of racist attacks, the decline of democracy and the rise of fascist movements throughout the world, the nuclear sabre rattling, and the reversal of any progress made on climate change. It’s dispiriting. And there are people out there, posing as Christians, claiming that things I find abhorrent. Joe Walsh, a former Republican Congressman and extreme rightist ideologue, tweeted: If Jesus was back among us, he'd be a law-abiding gun owner. He'd support the Police. And he'd say "Merry " not "Happy Holidays." I was asked how I coped with the constant sense of sadness and rage that threatens to overwhelm so many of us. How might we have hope? And I said, I am part of a religious community which believes that because we encounter God, we are empowered to engage in defiance, in making justice, in finding hope. I am part of a group that would never say, “If Jesus was back among us”, because we live in the presence of , who need not suddenly and apocalyptically appear for us to know his presence among us. Because of our encounters with Christ at this table, surrounded by these people, week after week, simply or not, we know a God who would never appear as a law abiding gun owner who unquestioningly supported police. So this morning, I am going to talk about how it is that the Anglo-Catholic movement that little St. Matthias is part of, emerged as a force for social change and social justice. How is it that we keep hope alive in this place, in this community? I’m going to tell this story by talking about our Anglo-Catholic hero of the week, John Mason Neale. Neale was educated and ordained in England at a time when the Anglo Catholic movement was just starting, the 1830’s and 40’s. Like them, he saw the urgent need for change in the Church of England, for people to realize that the church wasn’t just part of the national bureaucracy. Let me tell you what I found out about the churches in England in that time. Most of them, especially the country churches, had communion very rarely, some as rarely as every 3 years. There were fundamentalists all over England’s diocese, insisting everyone adopt their view of religion. While the dissenting churches, like the Methodists, were increasingly singing , most Anglican congregations seldom sang hymns. There’s still no official book in the Church of England. The services would be joy less. Since the time of the Restoration in the late 1600’s, the practice of wealthy people was to build private family pews in the church, complete with heaters and cushions. Servants sat upstairs in the galleries at the back. Poor people often didn’t attend at all. Many people would chat, read, and not participate in the service.

4 It wasn’t anything like what we would call a Christian community. We know all about the ritual: no to add colour, no candles to add light, celebrating communion from the left or north side, so that everyone could see there was no magic going on. Anglican were being pressured to be more and more fundamentalist. It was all pretty austere. John Mason Neale wanted to change everything about the church, and in his 48 year long life, he tried to do it all. The commitment to this new theology, this new worship and devotion, this new form of Christian service, nearly cost him his life. In trying to conduct a funeral for a young who had caught scarlet fever due to her care for a sick family, the nun’s father organized a team of thugs to assault and threaten to kill him. He jumped over a back fence and escaped to a pub. What John Mason Neale figured out was that the Church of England needed a new injection of fabulous. Like so many Anglican leaders before him, he used the writings of early Christian theologians, who lived 100-400 years after the birth of Christ, the writings of the Church Fathers. At the time of the Reformation, Anglican leaders read the Ancient writings of Greek and Latin speaking bishops of the early church. It is who said: “We and our people – thanks be to God – follow no novel and strange religion, but that very religion which is ordained by Christ, sanctioned by the primitive and Catholic Church and approved by the consistent mind and voice of the most early Fathers.” Again during the Revolution and at the Restoration, when the puritans were no longer ruling the country, Anglicans who worked to rebuild the church, looked to these early fathers. Like Anglicans, they weren’t Roman Catholics, but they were catholic. They provided a rich tradition from which Neale and the others could draw to revive the dried out, sensory deprived church in their time. John Mason Neale didn’t stop with reading their theology. He read their . He read their mystic poetry. He read the hymns they wrote. He realized that the renewal of the Church of England might be richer and happier with the addition of mysticism, of devotion, of singing and of architecture. He translated hundreds of hymns of the ancient church and the , hymns long forgotten in the west and never heard in England. * All Glory, Laud and Honour * O come, O come, Emmanuel * Of the Father's Heart Begotten * Sing, My Tongue, the Glorious Battle He published hymnbooks. He slammed the fundamentalists who claimed that their interpretation of the Bible was the only true religion. They could never explain passages which were contradictory. With regard to pews, he wrote a small book on their history, describing all of his objections to the classism and exclusion, the impiety of box pews. Because they replicated the class distinctions so deeply entrenched outside the church, distinctions that were offensive, he believed strongly that they had no place in church. So he hacked down the pews with a hatchet. In his first parish. For John Mason Neale, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist inspired not only devotion, but inclusion. The poor had to be fully included in the liturgy, not sent to sit well out of sight and mind in the gallery. This was radical. It wasn’t just his use of vestments and candles that was noteworthy. He believed that Christ’s presence mandated a new way of being, an inclusive and boundless encounter with

5 God. This idea about the poor wasn’t common. In most of England, debtors were sent to prison, the poor to work in horrible conditions in Poor Houses. Human life wasn’t worth too much. * 30 out of every 100 babies died before they reached 5. * The average life expectancy was only 45 -50 years. * Nearly one in 140 births resulted in the death of the mother. Neale’s responded by forming the Sisters of St. Margaret, a society of women devoted to caring for the sick. For so many of these early Anglo Catholics, the response to their experience of faith was to deal with human suffering head on. In a world in which women had gifts but no way to exercise them, the sisterhoods offered a chance for meaningful work. In a country hostile to religious change, the sisters won public favour through their nursing work. They weren’t set up to seem holy, but to change the world. A deepened awareness of God as a presence, not a theory, drove this work. In turn, the work allowed the greater acceptance of Anglo-Catholicism. In this morning’s psalm, we sing, “May the monarch defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.” I think Neale understood verses like these as a commandment to remake the church. With his hatchet. With human voices. With bread and wine, available to all the faithful, week in and week out. With more and more devotion, a local holiness, centred in each parish Eucharist, totally accessible to everyone. John Mason Neale spent his brief life bringing the fullness of the church’s eastern and ancient traditions to the church in his era. From him, we learned that the richer the liturgy, the better it equips the people to do God’s work. In his example of tearing out pews with a hatchet, we begin to see a relentless commitment to the inclusion of all people in the Eucharist. In his founding of the sisters, we see the strength and power of a lifetime committed to serving God. We can identify with his rants against fundamentalism, a theology that stunts our recognition of God’s ongoing movement in the world. In the Gospel for today, John the Baptist says, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor;' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” It’s clearly not enough to say “We have the Tractarians for our ancestors” or “We are Anglo-Catholics”. We need to find out what’s next, where Jesus is taking us. How might John Mason Neale guide us as we re-examine our vision and mission at St Matthias? I see three main ways: • First, because of Neale’s work, we know that our tradition is full of beauty and reverence, that incorporating material from the eastern or ancient church usage will open us to new experiences of the holy. • Second, because of Neale’s passion, we know that the common experience of making Eucharist compels us to be inclusive in our worship. OR as Paul says in Romans: Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. • Third, because of Neale’s ability to found and develop a strong women’s religious order, we know that lives devoted to Christ can change the world. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist can transform any and all of us into agents of God’s revolution in the world.

6 Finally¸ because of his opposition to fundamentalism, we know that there are no easy answers. We can and must embrace one another and our new friends and allies as we move forward in an increasingly difficult world. By gathering here, in the presence of a Christ who joins with us, we regain our bearings and our strength. From this table, we go out. Not in certainty, nor in fear, but in hope.

Let us pray that we might abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

7 Advent 3- Sunday 11 December 2016

Parish of Saint Matthias (Bellwoods) – Mother Joyce Barnett Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God, who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. - Psalm 146: 5,7

This morning we are going to focus on two great Anglo-Catholic heroes, Maude Royden and Desmond Tutu. Maude came to Anglo- Catholicism from her political work in a women’s settlement house and the suffrage movement. She developed a theology that was centred in the sacraments and the belief that God intended there to be equality between all people, especially between the genders. Archbishop Tutu has changed our world through his non-violent resistance to the apartheid regime in South Africa, followed by his chairing Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He still works for justice and peace, believing that God loves everyone without exception. He tells the story of his mentor, co-worker and friend, Fr. Trevor Huddleston. Fr. Huddleston was a member of the Community of the Resurrection, which was founded on the principles of the Oxford Movement and the Christian Socialist Union. Let’s start with Maude Royden who was born in 1876 into a broad Church of England family. Throughout her life, she was convinced that God was calling her to be a priest, or as she would have said in those days, a minister. She was, of course, not able to see any hope of at the turn of the century. Her sense of call also influenced her politics. In 1905 she left university to work with women. There were houses called women’s settlement houses in urban areas of England and later in the United States. They were not as we might expect, a place like Bellwoods House. Rather, they were houses where middle-class reformers, mostly women, could live while they worked with poor and working class women. They offered child care, food, health services, English classes and meeting spaces. They were also places where those middle class women could do useful work and find a freedom that perhaps was not available while they lived in their father’s house! These settlement houses were funded by people of means who were concerned about urban poverty. This charitable giving was encouraged by the church. And for the women who were on the front line doing the work in these houses, the experience could be transformative. As I mentioned in our Advent 1 homily there is a difference in how churches see mission. Anglo-Catholics get dirt under their fingernails, to quote Bp. Poole. I also characterised it as the difference between feeding the hungry and inviting the hungry to eat with us. As Maude Royden worked with these women who were living with poverty, she became convinced of the importance of votes for women. She became a suffragist and by 1909 she was on the Executive of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Royden linked her commitment to the suffrage movement with her Christianity. Maude’s Jesus came to teach us of the equality of all people, regardless of their gender. She wrote that the women’s movement was “the most profound moral movement since the foundation of the Christian church.” Royden’s goals for the women’s movement went beyond the vote. She wanted women to have access to birth control and protection for 8 their children. For working women to have better working conditions. She believed in equal standards of moral behaviour between genders. This support extended to lesbians. Royden was a supporter of Radclyffe Hall and in 1928 spoke against the banning of The Well of Loneliness. Royden’s Christian faith also led her to pacifism, another unpopular stance, especially at the time of the Great War. Maude would change her position in 1939. She declared that Nazism was a greater evil than war. After World War 1, Royden’s energy shifted to the role of women in the church. Because she felt called to the priesthood, she took a job as assistant preacher at City Temple, a congregational church in London. She hoped that this would demonstrate to Anglican authorities that women had a valid call to ministry. At the same time, she felt a longing for the beauty of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic mass. A wise friend invited her to Oxford and an Anglo-Catholic was born! In 1929 Maude founded a Society for the Ministry of Women which campaigned for women’s ordination. So many of the things that she was fighting for seem ordinary to us, but remember how radial they would have seemed in the early decades of the last century: Lay participation in liturgy, especially by women. The study of biblical criticism. Inter-faith dialogue. As well as women’s ordination. My friend and colleague The Rev. Dr.Alison Falby, wrote a journal article entitled Maude Royden’s Sacramental Theology of Sex and Love. She describes how Royden developed a theology that redefined belief and sacrament as the practice of love. She rejected the doctrine of original sin. As I study these Anglo-Catholics, I become aware that immersion in beautiful liturgy, with music, thoughtful exploration of scripture and sacraments, when combined with openness to the call to walk and work with Christ’s own in the world, led Stewart Headlam to reject the notion of hell and Royden, original sin. A theology of love indeed. We’ll see how these fundamentally important theological shifts are developed for our time in our next hero, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. When St. Gregory of Nyssa church in San Francisco built their new church, they put a huge mural of dancing saints all around the walls and ceiling. Of the hundreds of saints portrayed, only one is still living- Desmond Tutu. At the age of 9, Desmond Tutu met Fr. Trevor Huddleston. In those dreadful days of apartheid in South Africa a black person was supposed to step off the sidewalk and bow their head when a white person approached. But that day, before they could step aside, Fr. Huddleston raised his hat to greet Tutu’s mother. That simple demonstration of respect so impacted Desmond that he would seek ordination and work for the day when all South Africans would treat each other with that kind of respect. Tutu told this story when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. Tutu and Huddleston became lifelong friends and co-workers. Fr. Trevor Huddleston was a priest from the Community of the Resurrection in West Yorkshire. This community was founded by 6 priests in 1892 and was the acknowledged child of the Oxford Movement. They proclaimed the world made new in Christ and shared social and missionary concerns. As Christian Socialists, they felt particularly drawn to the working poor of England’s industrialized north. They developed beautiful liturgy and were influential in restoring chant in Anglican worship. Ancient chant such as we use for our . After the Boer War, the Community of the Resurrection were invited to South Africa to help rebuild the country. They established a centre there and in time Fr. Trevor Huddleston was sent as a priest, later to become Bishop of Tanzania and throughout his ministry a supporter of the struggle to free South Africa. Once young Desmond Tutu had learned that discrimination was not universal and that religion could be a powerful tool for racial equality, he became increasingly frustrated with the apartheid system. He became the first black person to be appointed to many church jobs, Dean,

9 Bishop and General Secretary, always with the belief that God’s plan was that all South Africans could be treated with justice and equality. He said of that time, "I never doubted that ultimately we were going to be free , because there was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light, death over life.” A determined leader, he worked against apartheid using peaceful, non-violent means. More than once, he risked his own safety to prevent violence. He called for demonstrations and international boycotts but rejected terrorism. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while the struggle was still continuing. I remember hearing Archbishop Tutu preach at the World Council of Churches in 1983. He spoke of praying for one’s enemies, praying for the persecutors, for they have already lost and are so in need of God’s mercy. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which Tutu chaired may have saved the fragile peace that followed end of apartheid. Victims of terrible human rights violations gave statements and were heard and respected. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty. Tutu went on to found the Forgiveness Project based on what he learned. The TRC was the model for the Truth and Reconciliation project here in Canada to hear and witness the stories of residential schools. Desmond Tutu continues to be an important moral voice in the world today. He has said that if heaven is homophobic, he doesn’t want to go there. Most recently, he has said that he wants the option for a doctor-assisted death. He is prepared to wade into justice issues wherever he finds them. He doesn’t mince his words: On the consequences of injustice- One of the most blasphemous consequences of injustice, especially racist injustice, is that it can make a child of God doubt that he or she is a child of God. On the nature of forgiveness- Forgiving is not forgetting; it’s actually remembering and not using your right to hit back. It’s a second chance for a new beginning. On the love of God- We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low. On the nature of mission- There comes a time when we need to stop pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in. On what matters- In the end, what matters is not how good we are but how good God is. Not how much we love him, but how much he loves us. And God loves us whoever we are, whatever we’ve done or failed to do, whatever we believe or can’t.

10 Advent 4 - Sunday 18 December 2016

Parish of Saint Matthias (Bellwoods) – Mother Joyce Barnett

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here I am, send me. - Isaiah 6:8

Today, with our children among us, I would like to tell the story of a man who heard God's call and found the courage to say “Yes.” And he continued to say “Yes,” even when his life was in danger. The Episcopal Church has placed him in the Calendar of Saints as a martyr. Jonathan Daniels was born in 1939 in New Hampshire. During his teenage years he became an Anglo-Catholic. After High School, he first went to Military College. His father died while he was there and Jonathan began to question his faith in God. His father had always been such a good Christian, he thought. And he always worked hard volunteering at church. Why would God let him die young? With thoughts like these, he became depressed and unsure of himself, even though he was doing so well at school that he was voted class valedictorian. In 1962 on Sunday morning Jonathan went to mass in Boston. He felt a mysterious call to serve God in the words of the prophet Isaiah, who heard God ask “Whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said, Here I am, send me.” Jonathan switched his studies to theology and hoped to graduate in 1966 and be ordained as a priest. Meanwhile in the southern United States the Civil Rights Movement was gathering momentum. The Civil Rights Movement was fighting racism in the U.S. And especially in the southern states where black people were treated very badly. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Had had a bit of a setback when many black people had tried to march for their rights over a bridge in Selma, Alabama. They had been turned back with tear gas and terrible beatings. Dr. King was pulled in two directions about what to do in response. People all over the world had seen the television footage of men & women being attacked while they peacefully marched. It became known as Bloody Sunday. Many radical black groups wanted to push through with the march again. Others wanted King to back off and stay safe. He chose another plan. Dr. King put out a call for religious leaders across the United States to come to Alabama. Jonathan Daniels went to that night at his school . As the sang the , Daniels knew that he had to go to march with Dr. King. The words of Mary's song, “He has put down the mighty from their seat and has exalted the humble and meek.” Those words inspired Jonathan and he and a fellow student named Judy got on the bus for Alabama. Dr. King started the second march with many religious people in the crowd. They made their way toward the site of the Bloody Sunday attack. As they reached the bridge, Dr. King called for all the marchers to kneel down and pray. Then they got up and went peacefully back the way they came. It was a brilliant move, making the point for freedom and justice, but without any more violence from those who opposed them. The TV cameras caught it all. The President put forward a bill that said that everyone had a right to be safe to vote just a few days later. After the march, Jonathan and Judy missed their bus back to school. They took this for a sign that they should stay and help with the Civil Rights Movement instead of going back for the rest of the term. They got permission from the school to stay and work, which is why, when

11 we see pictures of Jonathan, he is wearing the collar of a theological student. Jonathan and Judy stayed in Alabama, sometimes going to demonstrations, sometimes to meetings. They also liked to help local children with their homework, since the schools for black children were so overcrowded, there was no extra help. Jonathan wrote about all that he was learning. He wrote about how he had become very angry with white racists. Then one day he was tear-gassed at a demonstration and I would think that would make him furious. But Jonathan realized that day that the white people in the American South who were racist were also not free. “i have learned to love my enemies through the cross,” he wrote. “As a soldier of the cross, I am free. Free even to give my life. Did Jonathan know what was coming when he wrote those words? Jonathan went to a demonstration in August in Lownes County Alabama, known to be a terribly racist place. It was just after the passage of the Voters Rights Act and everyone was on edge. Jonathan and several others were arrested and thrown in jail. They were held for 6 days in a very hot cell with no toilets and no showers. Jonathan led them all in praying and singing hymns. He and a Roman Catholic priest who was also white were offered bail. They turned it down until their black friends could be set free too. Early one morning with no notice, they were let out. They walked down the street to a convenience store that sold to black and white people. They wanted to buy a cold drink. On the porch was a man named Coleman with a rifle. He pointed it at Ruby Sales, one of the black young people who had been in jail with Jonathan. She was 17 years old. Jonathan pushed her out of the way and the shotgun blast killed him instantly. The man who killed him was later acquitted by an all-white jury. That so enraged people that the laws were changed so that juries would be integrated. Martin Luther King Jr. said of Jonathan, “The meaning of his life was so fulfilled in his death that few people in our time will know such fulfillment or meaning though they live to be a hundred.” Of course, we know that Dr. King was also murdered in the cause of freedom. Jonathan was declared a martyr and his feast day is August 14, the day that he was arrested. From Jonathan's writing: We too may set our faces to go to Jerusalem, as [Jesus] has gone before us. We go to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those that are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. We go to stand with the captives and the blind and the oppressed. We go in active non-resistance. Not to confront, but to help and to free. As we thank God for his life and his witness let us do our best to follow his example. As we look for what the Holy Spirit is calling us to do in our own mission and ministry, let us be ready to love and to help and to free.

12