David Rider
Left: The Choir of All Saints Parish, Brookline, directed by Dr. Stephan Griffin. Right: Guest preacher Byron Rushing: In electing Barbara Harris its bishop suffragan in 1988, "The Diocese of Massachusetts voted better than we knew."
All Saints Parish in Brookline hosted Choral Evensong on Sunday, Feb. 11, commemorating the historic consecration on that date in 1989 of the Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris (1930-2020) as the first woman to be ordained a bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion.
"'I will sing to my God a new song'--what an appropriate reading for any gathering that celebrates, thinks about, wants to still argue with Barbara Harris!" guest preacher Byron Rushing said of the evening's opening Scripture lesson from Judith. "Singing was Barbara's prayer."
The Episcopal Church's 2022 General Convention moved to include Harris's 1989 consecration in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, with a commemoration of her life to be developed for possible future inclusion in the church's calendar.
In his sermon, Rushing--a civil rights leader, historian, retired state legislator and former president of the Episcopal Church General Convention's House of Deputies--recounted first meeting Harris in the late 1950s as activists were beginning to organize and engage against racial segregation still prevalent in The Episcopal Church and its institutions.
He recited verses from "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the song written in 1900 by brothers James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson for a school assembly featuring orator Booker T. Washington; it came to feature prominently in the Civil Rights Movement and has come to be known as "the Black national anthem." The brothers later realized, Rushing said, that, as they heard their hymn being sung back to them around the country as the years went by, "they had written better than they knew." Similarly, in electing Barbara Harris its bishop suffragan in 1988, Rushing said, "The Diocese of Massachusetts voted better than we knew."
Rushing also recalled the 1989 consecration sermon preached by the Rev. Paul Washington, Harris's mentor at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, whose message was, Rushing said, "'Stand up. Become what God wants you to be.'"
"We know how to do it," Rushing said, citing examples of demonstrated support for marginalized groups and other "firsts" in the church. "So the issue becomes for us: Why not all the time be doing it? Why not all the time be singing? Why not all the time?"
A recording of the service livestream is available here.
--Tracy J. Sukraw