Bill Harkins
The Reverend Absalom Jones, 1746-1818
This famous image of Jones was rendered by Philadelphia artist Raphaelle Peale in 1810.
In our “Walk in Love” adult education class, we are learning about how Episcopal beliefs and practices shape our actions. We’ve learned the phrase Lex orandi, lex credenda, from the Latin, meaning “the law of prayer is the law of belief.” This describes the idea that habits of prayer shape Christian belief. It’s a reminder that prayer and belief are integral to each other, and that liturgy is not distinct from theology. In other words, our beliefs and actions are informed by our spiritual disciplines. This belief is shared by most faith traditions in one way or another and has to do with “meaning making” and spirituality as we live out our day to day lives. When I was a sophomore at Sandy Springs High School, I was unexpectedly promoted to the varsity football team due to the injury of a senior whose position I shared in our Power-I option offense. Truth be told, I was scared, and unprepared. When the team manager asked me to pick a number for my jersey, I chose #21 because Roberto Clemente was among my athletic heroes. While known primarily for his years with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Clemente’s first love was track and field, and he was an Olympic hopeful in his youth before deciding to turn his full attention to baseball. While I played football for many years, track and field was also my true passion, and running has been (so far) a life-long passion. When my teammates learned of my jersey choice, and why I chose it, some used racist language to describe me, and Clemente (this was still very much Jim Crow south in the early 70’s). I was hurt, and disappointed.
And I wore that jersey for the next three years!
At about this time I was tentatively making my way into the Episcopal Church, driving from my neighborhood down Mt. Vernon Highway to Holy Innocents’ Episcopal, where Rev. Bob Johnson was the rector (the vicarage was in our neighborhood). I shared my story with him, and he provided a compassionate and safe context for me to work through my disappointment in my teammates and help me do the good work of turning my anger into compassion; my grief into empathy; and my shame into grace. He was the first person to tell me that how we pray informs our beliefs and informs the way we live out those beliefs in our quotidian lives.
Clemente did just that, spending much of his time during the off-season involved in charity work. When Managua Nicaragua was affected by an earthquake on December 23, 1972, Clemente immediately set to work arranging emergency relief flights. He soon learned, however, that the aid packages on the first three flights had been diverted by corrupt officials of the government, never reaching victims of the quake. He decided to accompany the fourth relief flight, hoping that his presence would ensure that the aid would be delivered to the survivors. The airplane which he chartered for the New Year’s Eve flight had a history of mechanical problems and it also had an insufficient number of flight personnel (the flight was missing a flight engineer and a copilot), and it was also overloaded by 4,200 pounds (1,900 kg). It crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Puerto Rico immediately after takeoff on December 31, 1972, due to engine failure. The plane was never found.
This week we observe the Feast Day of Absalom Jones, who was America’s first Black priest. Born into slavery in Delaware at a time when slavery was being debated as immoral and undemocratic, he taught himself to read, using the New Testament as one of his resources. At the age of 16, Jones’ mother, sister, and five brothers were sold, but he was brought to Philadelphia by his master, where he attended a night school for African Americans operated by Quakers. Upon his manumission in 1784, he served as lay minister for the Black membership at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church with his friend, Richard Allen, and together they established the Free African Society to aid in the emancipation of slaves and to offer sustenance and spiritual support to widows, orphans, and the poor.
The active evangelism of Jones and Allen greatly increased Black membership at St. George’s. Alarmed by the rise in black attendance, in 1791 the vestry decided to segregate African Americans into an upstairs gallery without notice. When ushers attempted to remove the black congregants, the resentful group exited the church.
In 1792 Jones and Allen, with the assistance of local Quakers and Episcopalians, established the “First African Church” in Philadelphia. Shortly after the establishment that same year, the African Church applied to join the Protestant Episcopal Church, laying before the diocese three requirements: the Church must be received as an already organized body; it must have control over its own affairs; and Jones must be licensed as lay-reader and if qualified, ordained as its minister. Upon acceptance into the Diocese of Pennsylvania, the church was renamed the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. The following year Jones became a deacon but was not ordained a priest until 1802, seven years later. At 56 years old, he became the first Black American priest. He continued to be a leader in his community, founding a day school (as African Americans were excluded from attending public school), the Female Benevolent Society, and an African Friendly Society. In 1800 he called upon Congress to abolish the slave trade and to provide for gradual emancipation of existing slaves. Jones died in 1818.
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, left, and the Very Rev. Martini Shaw celebrate the Eucharist during a Feb. 9 service celebrating the Feast of Absalom Jones. Photo: Kirk Petersen/Episcopal News Service. To celebrate the Feast of Absalom Jones, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe traveled to the spiritual home of the first Black Episcopal priest: the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1792, with Jones as its first rector.
“We have all heard the many wonderful stories of Absalom Jones,” Rowe said in his Feb. 9 sermon. “He transformed the church, transformed the world around him … he changed lives by his mild manner,” and built a church of 500 people in only a year. Rowe began by quoting from the Gospel of John, where Jesus said, “I am the vine, and you are the branches,” a metaphor the presiding bishop returned to several times.
“Absalom Jones built a community, and didn’t build it because he himself was a great man,” Rowe said. “He built it because he himself knew that he was to be connected to the vine, and from where his power came, and from where the glory of God would go forth through him in that place.” Jones and other African Americans founded St. Thomas after staging a historic walkout from St. George’s Methodist Church, where they faced discrimination despite having been allowed to worship. The story is captured in “Blessed Absalom,” the opening hymn, which calls out the church by name:
Founded the Saint Thomas’ Church
For Afric’s sons and daughters blest
Full-fledged members of Christ’s body,
They no longer were oppressed.
Blessed Abs’lom, pray that weMay be the church at Christ’s behest
(Hymn 44, Lift Every Voice and Sing)
This hymn, like so many, evokes a prayerful hope that “we may be the church at Christ’s behest.” Indeed, and in this season of our lives at Holy Family, in the Episcopal Church undergoing rapid change, and in our own country, we are seeking to make meaning of what we are experiencing. This is ultimately based on hope in a loving God who holds us, and cares for the world. One may ask “If we have faith, why is hope so important?” While faith is believing in something, even without seeing proof, “hope” is the expectation that what we believe in and pray for will actually come to pass, making it a future-oriented aspect of faith; we need hope to actively anticipate the positive outcomes of your faith, providing motivation and resilience in the face of challenges. We can’t have hope without first having faith in something. Hope looks to the future, and while faith can encompass the present and past, hope is focused on the positive possibilities yet to come. Having hope gives us perseverance, resilience, and the strength to keep going even when things are difficult because we believe in a better future. We hope to bridge the political, racial, economic and other divides that threaten to separate us.
I’m grateful to Rev. Bob Johnson, whose pastoral care led me to the Episcopal Church and who listened to my lamentations, and to Roberto Clemente, who helped teach me that while athletics is important, how we live out our faith is more important, and Absalom Jones, whose faith led to hope and helped me understand in new ways the importance of respecting the dignity of every human being.
And so, we pray, “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
I’ll see you later down the trail, and I hope to see you at church! Bill+