It’s been lonely on the second floor of the Community House this week. Dean and Zack are currently in London, visiting our friends at St. James’s Piccadilly, whom we established a link with nearly two years ago. I hope you’ll have a chance to watch Zack’s sermon given this past Tuesday evening at their Sanctuary service and to watch the sermon Dean will give there this coming Sunday morning. Having visited St. James’s myself this past September, I’m glad that Dean and Zack will have the chance to see our vibrant sibling parish for themselves.
When our link with St. James’s started, I don’t think any of us understood just how much it would enrich the lives of our two communities. Throughout the year, St. Jamesians show up at St. Bart’s services and St. Bartians show up at St. James’s (and even at their partner parish St. Pancras, Euston Road). More than once, members of St. James’s have encountered a fellow St. Jamesian at St. Bart’s Coffee Hour, not knowing the other was also in New York! January’s visit to St. Bart’s of the Reverend Dr. Ayla Lepine, art historian and the Associate Rector of St. James’s, was met with rave reviews. Our Saturday Mornings @ St. Bart’s Zoom group now includes several St. James’s members, and Ayla has warmly welcomed all of us to join their Monday evening virtual Bible study, Rooted in God's Earth: Trees in Scripture (which meets at 1:30 pm Eastern time).
Ayla and I are especially excited about a virtual event scheduled for next Saturday, June 22. It will be the very first truly joint gathering of the St. Bart’s and St. James’s communities—an event at which neither of us is hosting the other, but at which we are both participating on completely equal footing. The Reverend Jarel Robinson-Brown, a priest of the Church in Wales whose own visit to St. Bart’s in July 2023 was fervently lauded by many of you, will speak on the theme “Pride, Rage and Prophecy: Transatlantic Reflections of a Black Queer Priest.”
Jarel, who is known to both communities and is respected as a thinker on both sides of the Atlantic, is the perfect person to bring St. Bart’s and St. James’s together. Jarel, the author of Black Gay British Christian Queer, is also the perfect person to reflect on two crucial observances that will converge together next week: Pride Month, an annual worldwide celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, and Juneteenth, a US federal holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States.
The convergence of both Pride Month and Juneteenth reminds us of what so many activists have taught us over the years: our liberation is bound up with one another’s; none of us can be truly free unless all of us are free. We can’t pursue racial justice or justice for LGBTQ+ people alone; the struggle for justice is a collective one in which we all must be engaged. That we at St. Bart’s and St. James’s are commemorating Pride Month and Juneteenth in a Transatlantic way is particularly poignant: the journey across the Atlantic Ocean caused pain and oppression to so many enslaved people; by connecting across that same ocean for the purposes of friendship and justice, we reclaim it as a conduit for love and hope.
I hope you’ll pray for Dean and Zack as they continue their visit to St. James’s this weekend, and I hope you’ll join us on Zoom next Saturday to meet our friends from St. James’s and hear from Jarel. I expect we’ll all be challenged, inspired, renewed, and transformed.
