St. Barnabas Eagle Rock does Bible study right. This week 40 were present at the historic church as the Rev. Canon Jaime Edwards-Acton and the Rev. Carlos Ruvalcaba, leading a bracing bilingual study of John 18:33-37, prepared us both for Christ the King Sunday and the realm of justice and love that awaits us all.
A delicious supper, song, and plenty of fellowship came first; we ended with a brief service of Holy Eucharist. Warmed by the Holy Spirit, we headed back out into the night by 8:30. A joint ministry with St. Stephen’s Hollywood, they do it every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Check it out!
Many attendees were Episcopal emigres from the town of El Nigromante in Veracruz, Mexico, gathered under the banner of St. Mark and now settled in and around la ciudad de los angeles. They made a community decision to join St. Stephen’s and St. Bede’s. Canon Jaime invited me to participate in the presentation of a welcome certificate. Over dinner I chatted with two young parents, Bibiana and Yesenia, who told me about the process as well as the spirit of welcome they encountered in their new church home. Among the veterans was Canon Andy Tomat, volunteer treasurer of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.
Worry about the election and the heightened risk for immigrant workers and their families was palpable but not overwhelming. The spirit of joy was upon us. Many folks spoke up about the power and complexity of our passage from John, which, because of late first century power struggles, shifts responsibility for Jesus’s persecution and execution from Rome, where it belongs, to Jewish authorities, who lived under oppression themselves.
More than ever before, I was struck by Jesus saying this: “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” One speaker had identified truth with love and justice, and when you think about it, everyone knows what love and justice are, especially when we experience them, or when we don’t. Really know them, Jesus suggests, and you know him. But if my innate love and justice become entangled with other priorities, or the free flow of my heart is clamped by trauma or bitterness, I may not recognize Jesus. I may worship other gods instead.
