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Pictured above is a baptismal font from the early 16th century at St. Matthew's Church in Ipswich, Suffolk, England.
Black men and women have shaped and impacted Christianity around the world for centuries. Mary Phyllis is among the first named Protestants of color in Europe. Though many details are lost to time, we do know about some details of her life and her faith.
She was born around 1577 in Africa to African parents. When she was a child she and at least her father relocated to London. There, she worked alongside a seamstress, presumably learning the trade, and she expressed her desire to learn about Christianity to her employer. She goes on, supported in some way, to learn about the faith and after some time the seamstress’ pastor interviews Mary ahead of her baptism. He notes that her answers are quite adequate and she has a good comprehension of Christianity. By all accounts, Mary Phyllis was baptized of her own volition and goes on to be a "lively member of the congregation," clearly active in her church.
The Thursday night bible study was introduced to Mary Phyllis during their Expanding the Narrative series, shifting the historical conversation about the Reformation to highlight stories of African Protestants of color in England as well as prominent women leaders in Spain, Germany, France, and Hungary. Find out more here.
This Lenten season, let us answer the call to slow down, dwell in stillness, breathe deeply in the silence so we might listen and hear what God is whispering into our hearts.
Recently, my husband, Will and I were able to safely catch up with good friends of ours. After spending quality time with our friends, I noticed that my heart felt peaceful and so full of love and joy. These friends of ours, they are the type of friends we can go months without speaking regularly with and we know and trust that as soon as we are able to reconnect it will be as if no time at all has passed. They are the type of people who know us fully; they know our shiny, successful bits and they know our messy, not quite as successful bits and they accept us and love us fully.
As I marveled at how lucky we are to have people in our lives who know us, accept and love us so fully—I cannot help but be in awe of how completely known, accepted and loved we all are by God. God sees our shiny bits and our not so shiny bits and still pursues us and loves us. When we mess up, God “offers us a path back into right relationship” as Rev. Darwin reminds us each week in worship as we prepare to confess.
This Lenten season, we are taking time to be still, to breathe deeply into our lives, and to listen to our hearts—to pay attention to what fills them up and to what drains them. May you take time this week to intentionally seek out (safe) connection with others, yourself, and our God. May you trust that you are fully known, accepted, and loved.
—Margaret Fleming
Margaret Fleming has been a member of Second Presbyterian Church since 2017. A native of Mt. Pleasant, she found herself back home after graduating from Columbia Theological Seminary in May 2020. She resides in Mt. Pleasant with her husband Will, a fourth-year medical student at MUSC. She is a candidate for ordination in the PCUSA and is currently serving as a Chaplain Resident at Roper Hospital.
“Meeting people at their point of need, Inviting all into a dynamic relationship with Christ”
LET US KNOW YOU WORSHIPED WITH US TODAY - Please fill out a contact card to assist with COVID-19 contact tracing and to let us know you worshiped with us in person today even if you are a member. If you’re a visitor, online or in person, and would like more information please feel free to fill out a card or email Pastor Cress.
Second Presbyterian is a church community where you will be known and nurtured. Have a prayer request? Please let us know here. Interested in joining Second? Find more about becoming a member here.
And get connected! Join a small group here. While we may be practicing social distancing these days, there are still ways to be involved and to offer your time, talents, and resources in service to others. Please reach out to our Director of Community and Communications Jordyn Pritchard to get connected.
Dear Friends in Christ —
I’ve been grappling this week with the thrust for Lenten sermons. In the past I haven’t been shy expressing my belief that to know, to really experience the excitement, the pure joy of the Resurrection, one must have walked with Jesus through the days before. The entry to Jerusalem on the colt, the cleansing of the temple, teaching from the Mount of Olives, planning for one last supper, one last chance to lay out the mission.
One needs to imagine the gut-punch of betrayal, whether it was foreknown or not. The plea in the garden, “if there’s another way…” And the face turned, resolute to the Legion come to arrest him. His cheek offered to be kissed.
It will come to this. And during these days ahead we will follow a rough chronology and seek out the man Jesus as he leaves nothing to chance, using each moment to teach, to model, to show strength, resolve, love. Let’s approach the Final Week together.
Amen,
“Meeting people at their point of need, Inviting all into a dynamic relationship with Christ”
LET US KNOW YOU WORSHIPED WITH US TODAY - Please fill out a contact card to assist with COVID-19 contact tracing and to let us know you worshiped with us in person today even if you are a member. If you’re a visitor, online or in person, and would like more information please feel free to fill out a card or email Pastor Cress.
Second Presbyterian is a church community where you will be known and nurtured. Have a prayer request? Please let us know here. Interested in joining Second? Find more about becoming a member here.
And get connected! Join a small group here. While we may be practicing social distancing these days, there are still ways to be involved and to offer your time, talents, and resources in service to others. Please reach out to our Director of Community and Communications Jordyn Pritchard to get connected.
This Lenten season, let us answer the call to slow down, dwell in stillness, breathe deeply in the silence so we might listen and hear what God is whispering into our hearts.
Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite services. It seems a bit odd, because it is often a somber service, a service where we are reminded of our mortality. I have stood in different churches and chapels over the past few years, heard those familiar words, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” and received ashes upon my forehead in the shape of the cross. I have cried every time I receive the ashes and hear those words because my favorite part about this somber service is that it is laced with a pure, loving hope. Hope that although this earthly body will not live forever, there is something much more.
A few years ago, I was serving as a seminary intern at a PCUSA church. I provided pastoral care with one of our congregants during her final few weeks at a hospice house. I had the honor of praying with this wonderful, faithful woman and her family every day for two weeks. When she died, I was a wreck. I was new into this whole ministry thing and while I had experienced some death in my life—I had never experienced it from the standpoint of a pastoral caregiver. I was faced with the question, “What is it that you believe about death and God in the midst of death?”
As I spiritually grappled with her death and what I believe about death and after death, a pastor shared with me words that I will never forget, “God looks death straight in the eye and laughs, because it is not the end.” With Christ, we have everlasting life—this is the underlying hope that accompanies us throughout our life journey and it is the hope that roots Ash Wednesday. That same pastor in that same conversation said something else that has remained with me, “in death our baptism is made complete.” Because in life and in death, we belong to God.
May this be the hope that we cling to now and always. Let us lean into today and the rest of the Lenten season, knowing that God is ever present, ever loving, and everlasting.
Margaret Fleming has been a member of Second Presbyterian Church since 2017. A native of Mt. Pleasant, she found herself back home after graduating from Columbia Theological Seminary in May 2020. She resides in Mt. Pleasant with her husband Will, a fourth-year medical student at MUSC. She is a candidate for ordination in the PCUSA and is currently serving as a Chaplain Resident at Roper Hospital.
Rosetta Simmons, pictured between Coretta Scott King and Juanita Abernathy, went on from Burke High School to work as a Licensed Practical Nurse at the Medical College Hospital, then the Charleston Memorial Hospital in 1966. She became frustrated with the unequal treatment African American workers faced at the hospital, and began meeting with local activists and union leaders to organize the hospital workers in striking for better pay and fair treatment.
“Dignity and respect.” Rosetta Simmons said these were her main concerns as an organizer of the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike. In her 2009 oral history she explained, “That was my main goal, dignity and respect… Management needed to know that we are human beings, and we ought to be treated with dignity and respect.”
As an organizer, Simmons felt it was important to grab the city’s attention by always having strikers on the picket line. Simmons worked with SCLC to organize shifts for the strikers, keeping the line filled at all hours of the day.
When the strike ended, Simmons worked closely with the movement’s leadership to play a valuable role in the rehiring of her associates. The strike ended in the summer of 1969, but Simmons was not rehired until November. During these months of negotiating to get her job back, Simmons remained involved in civil rights in Charleston by helping register over 800 African American to vote. She also became the vice president of the local union, 1199B, and remained an active member of the union until her retirement in 1996 after 29 years of service.
Listen to more of Rosetta Simmon’s oral history through the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative. And read more about the Charleston Hospital Workers Movement here.
Lent has always been the liturgical season that intimidates me. Growing up, I heard about people giving up chocolate for Lent and never quite understood why. Even now, after three years of seminary education, I had to look up what this season of Lent means and how Presbyterians practice it.
In my preparation research for this series, I learned why some people feel called to give up things, like chocolate or social media, for Lent. It is not about the thing you are giving up so much as it is about the intention behind the giving up. Lent is an invitation to go against how society tells us to live and what society tells us is important in order to “prepare our hearts for resurrection” (“The give-and-take of Lent,” Presbyterians Today located on presbyterianmission.org). The things we give up, or the practices we might add on are intended to help draw us closer to God. The article I referenced above states “we give things up or take on practices because we need to learn again and again that we live and move and breathe and have our being in God.”
As I opened my heart and prayed for this devotion, I kept hearing these words being whispered over and over: “stillness,” “silence,” “listen,” and “heart.” This Lenten season, let us answer the call to slow down, dwell in stillness, breathe deeply in the silence so we might listen and hear what God is whispering into our hearts. As Ash Wednesday draws near, I invite you to think of something you might want to give up or a practice you might want to take on setting the intention of drawing nearer to the One who created you, calls you by name, sustains you, and loves you with an everlasting love.
Margaret Fleming has been a member of Second Presbyterian Church since 2017. A native of Mt. Pleasant, she found herself back home after graduating from Columbia Theological Seminary in May 2020. She resides in Mt. Pleasant with her husband Will, a fourth-year medical student at MUSC. She is a candidate for ordination in the PCUSA and is currently serving as a Chaplain Resident at Roper Hospital.
“Meeting people at their point of need, Inviting all into a dynamic relationship with Christ”
LET US KNOW YOU WORSHIPED WITH US TODAY - Please fill out a contact card to assist with COVID-19 contact tracing and to let us know you worshiped with us in person today even if you are a member. If you’re a visitor, online or in person, and would like more information please feel free to fill out a card or email Pastor Cress.
Second Presbyterian is a church community where you will be known and nurtured. Have a prayer request? Please let us know here. Interested in joining Second? Find more about becoming a member here.
And get connected! Join a small group here. While we may be practicing social distancing these days, there are still ways to be involved and to offer your time, talents, and resources in service to others. Please reach out to our Director of Community and Communications Jordyn Pritchard to get connected.
Dear Friends in Christ —
A few weeks ago we entered the liturgical season of Epiphany. Remember, the word means to behold the world or one's life in a new way, with new eyes. It is when something becomes clear to us in a way we have never seen or, perhaps, noticed before. New light can be shed on an old problem; a situation which has always been seen the same way suddenly becomes radiantly clear with a new understanding. In our gospel text this week, there is radiance. A chosen few witness Jesus’ transfiguration, a…#continuingrevelation that positions us for transformation in the days ahead.
Wednesday morning, Ash Wednesday, I’ll be available for prayer and the Imposition of Ashes at 9:00 in the sanctuary. An Ash Wednesday primer/homily will be online. Wednesday evening we will reaffirm our baptism in the sanctuary at 7:00 p.m. The service will be live streamed— there is power is in the gathering.
Together we will navigate these days.
Imposition of Ashes at 9:00 a.m.
Rev. Darwin will be available for prayer and the Imposition of Ashes at 9:00 in the sanctuary.
Renewal of Baptism at 7:00 p.m.
The 7:00 service will be in-person and live-streamed.
Septima Poinsette Clark was called the mother of the civil rights movement. She was a teacher for 40 years and has a long legacy of education and teacher activism. She fought to allow Black teachers in Charleston classrooms and was later instrumental in gaining pay equity for Black teachers in South Carolina, and her citizenship workshops influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.
Septima started teaching on Johns Island because Black teachers were not allowed in Charleston schools at the time. She taught for 40 years mostly in Charleston and Columbia until she was fired because she refused to resign from the NAACP after South Carolina passed a statute that prohibited city and state employees from belonging to civil rights organizations. She went on to develop citizenship workshops full time that King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference took nationwide. They were designed not only to promote adult literacy but to educate people about civics and get them involved in their communities.
Septima pioneered the concept of citizenship schools and went on to create over 800 of them across the South. The schools are credited with helping three-quarters of a million African Americans register to vote by the end of the 1960s. She retired from SCLC in 1970 and was elected to the Charleston School Board in 1975. The governor reinstated her pension the next year after declaring her 1956 termination unjust. She also published two memoirs, earned her master's degree, and was given a Living Legacy Award by President Carter. Septima Clark saw herself as “just a teacher,” but she mothered a movement and helped shape an entire country for the better.
“Meeting people at their point of need, Inviting all into a dynamic relationship with Christ”
LET US KNOW YOU WORSHIPED WITH US TODAY - Please fill out a contact card to assist with COVID-19 contact tracing and to let us know you worshiped with us in person today even if you are a member. If you’re a visitor, online or in person, and would like more information please feel free to fill out a card or email Pastor Cress.
Second Presbyterian is a church community where you will be known and nurtured. Have a prayer request? Please let us know here. Interested in joining Second? Find more about becoming a member here.
And get connected! Join a small group here. While we may be practicing social distancing these days, there are still ways to be involved and to offer your time, talents, and resources in service to others. Please reach out to our Director of Community and Communications Jordyn Pritchard to get connected.
Dear Friends in Christ —
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” - Annie Dillard
Are you comforted by this statement? Threatened? Confused? What other phrases are conjured to point to the importance of how we spend our time? “This is not a dress rehearsal.”
You’ve heard me reference, Debi Thomas, an essayist for the weekly webzine, Journey with Jesus. She’s director of children's and family ministries at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, California. I enjoy her writing. It stems from life experience rather than theological systematics. It resonates for me. Her weekly essay often directs me to facets of the text that I may not have seen before. #ContinuingRevelation
So with her prompt, I see that Mark is giving us a gift of a day in the life of the incarnate God. So how does Jesus spend a Sunday afternoon? Let’s look together and share communion. Grab your common elements.
Let’s be strengthened.
