At Church of the Epiphany, in Los Angeles’ Lincoln Heights neighborhood, folks admit that they and their family, friends, and neighbors are worried about the government’s threats of inhumane mass deportations. Rumors about ICE roundups were especially insistent last week.
But on a sunny Sunday morning, over 70 ventured from scary streets into safe church for a Spanish-language service where the vicar, the Rev. John Watson, a brilliant pastor and preacher, and I co-presided, and I preached. In our epistle, we heard St. Paul’s reflections about our physical and spiritual bodies. Perhaps when we fear, we’re in our physical body; yet when in the next moment, we hope and love, we’re in Jesus Christ’s territory. The switch in our hearts can flip just that quickly. Sometimes we’re right to worry. We’re always right to love, or so said our reading from Luke’s gospel, where Jesus said to love and be generous even to those who hate and persecute us. These days the public square offers less and less lawn space for the baptismal value of the dignity of every human being. This is surely the terrain of the church, perhaps as never before in our lifetimes.
In this spirit, Anthony, Adolfo, Nayeli, and Jasmin, all young people, came forward to be confirmed during the service. The fifth candidate, Ismael, for first communion, was closer to my age than that of the confirmands. He told me he had grown up in the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico but had never made it to his first communion. Offering him the sacrament, and inviting him to hold Bishop Bloy’s crozier as we posed for photos, were special privileges. I thought of all the events of his life and mine that had brought us together at that moment in the Holy Spirit.
Founded in 1887, our oldest church in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in continuous operation on the same site, Epiphany, which appears on the National Register of Historic Sites, became a justice landmark as a focal point for the farmworkers and Chicano rights movements. In 1968, UFW co-founder Cesar Chavez undertook a hunger strike on its premises, protesting violence against striking workers. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy paid a supportive visit.
In the name and memory of one its legendary activists and an especially amazing Episcopalian, Church leaders have helped organize the Lydia Lopez Center for Community Empowerment. One of its roster of distinguished former vicars, the Rev. Thomas Carey, helped raise funds to restore and refurbish the church, including basement rooms that were once the headquarters of the Chicano newspaper “La Raza.”
Faith and public policy continued to intersect in conversations over our delicious lunch in the parish hall. During the service, that legendary justice worker the Rev. Canon Richard Estrada assisted Fr. John and me. Rocio Peña Fernandez, who is discerning a call to leadership in the church, was my gracious chaplain while assisting in other ways. David Garcia led the rousing music. The bulletin noted that anyone who wants to use this historic church for their personal or institutional event is invited to contact church administrator Jose Luis Escobar at Epiphanyla28@yahoo.com.
