President of the House of Deputies Julia Ayala Harris delivered the sermon during the closing Eucharist service July 12, 2023, at “It’s All About Love: A Festival for the Jesus Movement.” The four-day churchwide gathering in Baltimore, Maryland, featured revival worship; special speakers and presenters; and numerous workshops focused on creation care, evangelism, and racial reconciliation.

Below is a video of Ayala Harris’s message and a lightly edited transcript of her remarks.

Transcript of the sermon

May the words of my mouth and meditation of our hearts reflect your truth and love, our Guide and our Redeemer.

Please be seated. Good morning, church. How is your soul this morning? Is your cup feeling filled? Is it feeling overfilled? Can you feel that the Spirit—she is here with us this morning. You feel her? She’s moving. She’s tickling our souls, and what a blessing it is to be here with you all.

Before I get started, more gratitude: I want to thank all those who organized this event, who made this possible, who told us revival in The Episcopal Church is a thing that we can do. I’ll start with Canon Stephanie Spellers and Jerusalem Greer and the teams of reconciliation, evangelism and creation care. Our fantastic interpreters that have been with us this whole time. The development office who also made this possible. Our communications department behind all the cameras and gadgets, the Diocese of Maryland. We’re back again. Good to be here. All those of you who presented workshops, who shared your knowledge; and, of course, our brother in Christ, our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.

Thank you all again. It is so good to be here. I can’t tell you. To share stories of mission and ministry, of our identities in Christ; to discuss our passions and hopes and dreams for the future. I’ve been walking around, and I’m hearing and meeting so many of you and hearing stories about you and your ministry, personal stories about your life in the church. I’ve also heard a whole lot of stories from our teenagers over at the Episcopal Youth Event, EYE. But I’ll talk about that later. This morning, I want us to take a moment to reflect on the importance of story-making.

Because story-making is really meaning-making, and we are designed for story.

So, I was an adult before I figured out how important stories were to humanity, to our human nature, to our God-given image as human beings. And it happened—I know the moment it happened; I was in South Sudan—it was Southern Sudan at the time—and I was living there working alongside the Sudan Council of Churches. And I was visiting a program site in Shilluk Kingdom. And we were doing the things that you normally do during the day.

So, we were checking on the building of a hospital. We were doing workshops with women inside local churches. And then at night we would feast on meat stews and rice. And when the sun went down—thank God the sun would go down; it’s hot in South Sudan, y’all—we would come together, and we would gather around the fire.

And this was in Shilluk Kingdom. So, Shilluk Kingdom is in an area that was way outside of anything anyone would call a town, very rural, no electricity, South Sudan. And we’re gathered around the fire next to a tributary of the River Nile. So, between the River Nile and the forest. And of course, every night there were no clouds, so the stars were magnificent. So here we are, God’s creation. It’s nighttime. The heat of the sun is no longer beating on us, and we are sitting around the fire. So, what do we do? We start to tell stories. And it starts off with stories about where we’re from. You know, we’re from all over the world, and what our parents were like, and that sort of thing.

And then as the night wears on, it turns into legendary stories. I mean truly legendary stories, right? The fish starts off this big, and then it’s this big, and then it’s this big. And then what happens? Well, fill in the blank, right? And I’m a lay leader so I want to keep this short, but sometime I’ll preach on the stories, I think. I’ve got some good ones for you.

So it was in that moment when we’re sitting around the fire, and I’m listening to this unbelievably legendary big fish tale. And it occurs to me as I look up at the stars, that we as humans, as God image-bearers, have been doing this for millennia, telling stories with each other around the fire, under the stars next to the water and the forest. And we communicate with each other. We are designed for story. Because stories, it occurred to me in that moment, are not just about facts, they’re not just about relaying information. They are how we are designed to take in education and formation. And they convey truths.

They also tell us who we are, where our identities are. Stories define us as families, as communities, as individuals, and as a church. These narratives, and we can think about this on our own; we don’t all have to go to South Sudan and you know, sit around fire. When we think about, and I think about the stories my grandmother tells our family and how that defines our family, how that defines my aunts and uncles and cousins and myself. I think about when my grandfather taught me how to spit-shine my shoes. And he told me that he learned that during his time in the Army. And then he told me about his time in the Army. That defines me.

These stories help shape our identities, and some can be comforting and teach us values. Like maybe you had a parent who taught you a family recipe and while you’re making it, you learn about the traditions of the old country. Or an aunt or an uncle who takes you back to the old neighborhood and shows you where you’re from and who your people are. And some stories are hurtful, like that coach or that teacher or maybe even a priest who told you that you are not enough.

We as Episcopalians, we have a story both communally and individually. So what is the story that we carry as Episcopalians, and how does that story affect how we do racial reckoning? How we think about climate justice, how we go about evangelism? Because these stories also give meaning to our lives and define how we go about the world and doing the business of church.

So we’ve come here to share our stories, to learn new stories. We’ve come here to give meaning to old narratives. And I believe, I hope, that we’ve come here to reframe old narratives, to transform what has been oppressive and unjust into new stories of hope and blessing and healing and wholeness.

Because what we know from our personal lives is that when we reframe a traumatic event, it gives our life meaning. We all have experiences of those hurtful times from childhood. When something that we have transformed and reframed in our personal lives, it allows us to learn from, take courage from, and draw new identities in new ways from those transformed experiences. In this moment, our church is being called to transform its story.

We are being called to transform stories and narratives about whose voices, whose literal bodies matter. Black and Brown bodies, Indigenous bodies, women’s bodies, children’s bodies, trans and non-binary bodies and differently abled bodies. And at the same time, because the Spirit doesn’t give us a break, we are being called to transform narratives about our church’s relationship with power and empire, with Indigenous boarding schools, with our history, with the trans-Atlantic slave trade and forced labor.

Do you feel the Spirit, church? Because she is calling us and God is calling us to transform these narratives; because she is calling us into a new identity. You feel it, right? Because we’re being called into a new identity focused on justice, courage, freedom, and love. Storytelling is an act of love. How do I know this to be true?

Because Jesus used storytelling as an act of love. Jesus used storytelling to teach, to heal, to empower. And in turn his disciples used stories about Jesus to bring Good News to the world.

So I have a new story for you all I’d like to share. Last week, just a few days ago, down the road in College Park, I was at Episcopal Youth Event, EYE, where there were over 800 teenagers and their adults, many of them young adults who were chaperones. And my friends, you want to talk about revival? That place was on fire for Jesus. We had two revivals in The Episcopal Church this week—two. Those kids were so on fire with the Spirit that at one point they actually demanded of the organizers to hold off on the programming because they wanted more songs of praise and more worship and more time in prayer.

I and others there can testify to it. That place was hot, and it was bumping; there was sweating everywhere. It was amazing. That was the Holy Spirit. That was a teenage revival. And you know what else? On the first night they had a healing service. OK, I’m getting a little off script now. Well, I already have been. But they had this healing service—I’ve been hanging around Michael Curry too much, so you know—and they’re, starting to explain to everyone, OK, well we’re going to have these prayer stations and there’s healing oil.

And now we haven’t had an Episcopal youth event in six years, right? These are young kids. So the moment they said, “Now you may go to a station if you feel so led,” more than three-quarters of those teenagers all stood up at once and fanned out instantly. They did not need an explanation about what a healing service was about. They didn’t need to be told.

And I think it’s because our teenagers have just come out of this unprecedented pandemic in which they watched racial and social injustice on their screens, on their social media. They watched the decline of democracy before their eyes. They saw their friends be victims of transphobia and racism. They witnessed the climate crisis and war. No one needs to explain to them what a healing service is.

And in the midst of all of this, they are learning about the story of Esther. Esther, who believed Mordecai when he told her, “Esther, perhaps you were made for such a time as this.” And when Esther took up with all the courage she had and said, “I will try to save my people, and if I perish, I perish,” I am here to tell you because I bore witness to it, that those teenagers, our teenagers, in our Episcopal church were made for such a time as this.

They are the heroes of our faith right now. They are writing their stories, and yet they are writing our story right now. Make no mistake about it, those teenagers at EYE are writing the story of the Episcopal church right now.

So, I have a treat. Who better to hear from than one of the teenagers? So I’m going to introduce you all—and it’s on video form—to Ellie, whom I got to know. And guys, she is—I use “guys” in the gender-neutral term; I’m from Chicago. I’m trying to get used to “y’all” because I’ve been living in Oklahoma long enough. But I’ll get there. So Ellie is one of, after hearing her story and you’ll see her in just a minute here on the video, one of the bravest, most amazing human beings I have ever met. And I just can’t wait for you to see this short 90-second snippet. But go on the EYE videos; watch these kids—you won’t believe it. But for now, here’s a little snippet from Ellie:

The challenges that we all face are so diverse. Yet every person in this room must face challenge in the same way. Courage. How do we find that gift within ourselves? Esther shows us clearly that courage in whatever form comes from leaning on God. For the humanity of her community, she takes a chance to stand in the face of oppression and beg for justice, even if she may fail. She strives for this holy justice not knowing exactly how to find it but doing so anyways. Leaning on God’s love in human form, Jesus, taking his example and turning it into real change.

Jesus stood for something greater than the status quo. He stood for a just society, a society of love. Even in the darkness we know this to be true because Jesus himself lived and died through these ideals. Christ shows us the gift of compassionate courage is innate because the love of God will never fail us.

If I perish, I perish. Esther’s actions and words in the face of fear show an extraordinary confidence brought to her through her commitment, through Christ’s love. For if she failed, it would not be due to her wrongdoings, but rather through her actions of love.

And through that love, friends, the love of God, we will never fail. We must show up in order to do the work. This ancient text tells us explicitly that all we have to do is show up. The greatest news of all is that showing up is enough to be the change. Esther came from an ordinary family, was an ordinary woman, lived an ordinary life, but she was a beloved child of God.

You don’t have to exceed society’s expectations of what extraordinary is to be a changemaker. You don’t have to go to the moon; you don’t have to cure disease; you don’t have to have a 4.0. You don’t have to go to an Ivy League, and you don’t have to win first place every time. You don’t have to fill the shoes that were made for you by the rest of the world. You just have to walk in the soles that God gave you. Just show up. …

That’s Ellie, y’all. That’s just 90 seconds of Ellie reflecting on Esther—preaching, right? Saying some of the same things we are telling ourselves here as adults. We are reminding ourselves of who we really are at this revival, and they are living who they are because the world hasn’t told them who they’re not yet.

So Ellie is just one of over 800 youth that were at EYE. And our church needs to be about telling Ellie’s story and lifting up all of those youth as we come off this mountaintop that we are experiencing as adults. We need to hold and carry those youth along with their mountaintop experience, too, and support them after their revival. Let’s not forget about them when we go home to our churches and our dioceses, because I heard so much from our teenagers last week. I heard about their concerns about racial injustice in the world, but even more so in their churches back home. They’re honest. Their anxieties about the climate crisis are real, folks. Like what we heard in the plenary. Are we ready? Are we ready to use our healing to help with anxieties around the climate crisis?

And I heard one young person bravely say, request, demand, that The Episcopal Church is perfectly positioned to have programs for religious healing, especially on those who identify as LGBTQIA2S+. That’s a call to action. And they spoke honestly about their struggles with mental health and wellness, especially coming out of this pandemic.

Those teenagers are looking for ways to bring the Good News to people who need to hear it, to a new generation and to a hurting world.

And so, my friends. You want revival? You want revival in yourselves? In your parishes? In your dioceses? In our communities?

But what narratives have to be retold in our parishes, in our families, in our communities?

Whose stories have not been told? And whose stories have yet to be told, like these teenagers’?

What stories need to be reframed? Because it is through stories that we develop our identities, that we create meaning, and that we forge our future. Because, my friends, Episcopalians, church, Spirit is calling us to live into the fires of Pentecost; to bear witness to the love of Jesus Christ; and to bring Good News to our families, our churches, and our communities, to a hurting world that so desperately needs it.

So be consumed by the fires of Pentecost when you leave here. Let it guide you, and let us begin, as we do always, with prayer.

Creator God,
We come before You, our divine Author, with hearts filled with gratitude and reverence.
We acknowledge that You are the embodiment of courage, justice, and love.

Grant us the courage to stand firm in our convictions, to face the challenges that come our way in unwavering faith. In moments of fear and doubt, infuse us with the boldness to step forward (if I perish, I perish), knowing that You are with us and that Your perfect love casts out all fear.

We pray for Your divine justice to prevail in our lives and in the world around us. May we seek justice for the oppressed, the marginalized, the voiceless, and the breathless. Help us to stand up against injustice and be advocates for righteousness and truth.

Fill our hearts with Your boundless love, the love that knows no borders and transcends all barriers. Help us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to extend kindness and compassion to all those we encounter. May our love be a reflection of Your love, shining brightly in a world that desperately needs it.

As we continue on our journey, writing the pages of our story, we place our trust in You, knowing that You are the source of true courage, justice, and love. Guide us, empower us, and fill us with Your Holy Spirit that we may live out our story in a way that brings glory to You, our loving, liberating, and life-giving God.

All of this we ask in Your name. Amen.

President Julia Ayala Harris

Julia Ayala Harris was elected president of the House of Deputies by her peers at the 80th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2022. She is the first Latina to hold the position.

She is a first-generation Mexican American, the daughter of an undocumented immigrant, from a large working-class family in the Chicago area. She came to the Episcopal Church 21 years ago, when she was 20 years old, after a crisis of faith in the Roman Catholic church of her childhood and the evangelical church of her teens. In the Episcopal Church, she has continually found healing, blessing, and wholeness in God’s unconditional love. Throughout her lay ministry, she has worked to bring about a church that can share that blessing with all of God’s people.

From her professional, familial, and personal experiences, she is passionate about a multitude of issues such as immigration, LGBTQIA2S+ inclusion, empowerment of women and girls, criminal justice reform, race and ethnicity, disability inclusion and access, sexual harassment and exploitation, as well as justice and peace initiatives.

Read more on the House of Deputies website.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.

[Episcopal News Service] Julia Ayala Harris’ election as president of the House of Deputies at the 80^th General Convention in July 2022 was imbued with the energy of historic change. She is the first woman of color — the first Latina — and at age 41, the youngest president in recent memory, elected from the youngest and most diverse slate of candidates ever. A former Roman Catholic, Ayala Harris brings the perspective of a convert who discovered The Episcopal Church as an adult.

Ayala Harris’ path to one of the highest-ranking positions in The Episcopal Church has been a personal and spiritual journey going back two decades. In her 21 years as an Episcopalian, the self-described “church geek” ascended through the church’s leadership, giving her an extensive résumé. She has served twice as a deputy from the Diocese of Oklahoma, a six-year term on Executive Council and over a dozen other leadership positions within The Episcopal Church and her diocese. She has also represented the Anglican Communion at the 2016 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and is currently representing The Episcopal Church at the World Council of Churches 11^th Assembly in Germany.

Biography of Ayala Harris

Ayala Harris, a first-generation Mexican American whose father was an undocumented immigrant, has managed nonprofit organizations around the U.S. and beyond. Among them are programs that provide transitional housing for homeless women and children, permanent supportive housing for people with disabilities, access to the arts, alternatives to incarceration for pregnant women and mothers. From 2005 to 2008, she was an international aid worker in Kenya and South Sudan with Church Ecumenical Action, supporting South Sudanese faith-based nonprofits and dioceses in grant writing, financial management and program design.

She is currently working on a doctorate focusing on faith-based nonprofit leadership – especially public perceptions of nonprofit leaders based on their race, gender or ethnicity – at the University of Oklahoma, where her husband, John, teaches regional and urban planning. They live with their teenage daughter, Izzy, in Norman, Oklahoma, where they enjoy spending time in nature, puzzles and board games, and above all, anything “Star Trek”-related.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Questions and answers with Ayala Harris

ENS: What’s your spiritual background? How did you come to The Episcopal Church?

Ayala Harris: I grew up in the Catholic Church, in the Diocese of Chicago, in the ‘80s. I adored going to church. I was an acolyte, and my first job, when I was 13, was to work in the parish office to answer phones and sort the mail and that sort of thing.

When I was a teenager, I had a big crisis of faith. And that had everything to do with giving birth to a baby boy that I placed for adoption. I was going to just tell you it was a spiritual awakening, but it’s both a crisis of faith and a spiritual awakening at the same time. And when I came back to my Catholic church after that, there wasn’t a place for me. There was hardly a place for teenagers at all, let alone a teenager who had been through this very adult experience.

So I found myself going to an evangelical youth group and was able to go find pathways to leadership and be spiritually nourished, and that’s where I got to learn a lot more about the Bible and pick up on biblical literacy. And then I went to an evangelical college and realized that I was still searching, that I hadn’t found a church home. I was still a square peg looking for a square hole but kept finding round ones and I didn’t feel like I belonged.

I had a classmate and a professor who both were Episcopalian. And there was something about their worldview and the way they talked about things that I appreciated, and I walked into an Episcopal church and received Communion from a woman priest. And I was completely blown away by women being allowed to be priests and pastors, and the deeper I went into The Episcopal Church, the more I realized that I was at home and I think that I’ve been Episcopalian my entire life. I just absolutely fell in love.

ENS: You worked your way up into the leadership of the church quickly. Are you naturally inclined toward leadership roles, or was that a journey of self-discovery too?

Ayala Harris: Oh, interesting. I’m not sure. I think I am inclined toward leadership roles, because I’ve been an executive director of different nonprofits. But in The Episcopal Church, when I start doing work – whether it’s committee work or an interim body or putting together a ministry program – there’s something in that that I think I feel called to and I’m passionate about, and I just lose track of time. I just love it so much. I think that I am a leader generally, and that I’m called to leadership roles in the wider context, but that perhaps my vocation is really in Episcopal leadership. I just do really enjoy it and I could just keep doing it. It’s not something that has felt like a chore to me.

ENS: You’ve talked about the significance of being the first woman of color and the first Latina president of the House of Deputies. How do you think that’s going to impact how you lead?

Ayala Harris: There’s so much that comes with embodied representation. I embody the representation that we hope to see in leadership in the church that [former] President [Gay Clark] Jennings has worked so hard to promote.

One of the priorities that I have for my leadership is to continue to expand who is in leadership in the church. Mostly that’s done through making appointments [to church leadership bodies], but also by providing an example of the types of goals we already have in leadership. I think it is interesting when people see just how diverse Executive Council is, because they’re seeing the top leaders of the church and we’re reflective of the diversity of the church, or even more so.

ENS: What are your other priorities?

Ayala Harris: The themes that I’ve kept coming back to are accessibility, inclusivity and safety. Examples would be making our governance structures – like General Convention and other pieces of the churchwide structure that the president of the House of Deputies has oversight over – to be more accessible to more people. That can include the nature, structure, scope and length of General Convention, but also things like wheelchair accessibility and sign language and captioning as well as child care and children’s programming.

A lot of that overlaps with the inclusivity piece, because if you’re able to have better access, you’re going to be a little bit more inclusive. Inclusivity means that once you get people there, you want to have them feel the sense of belonging, they belong in those spaces. So not only have you welcomed them and made it more accessible, but you’re including them and they feel that belonging.

Safety is related to my work as deputy chair of [the General Convention Committee on] Sexual Harassment, Sexual Exploitation and Safeguarding. If we’re going to be making our church structures more accessible and more inclusive, then we also have to ensure that we’re bringing them into safe spaces and that we’re taking care of them. I’m also working on how I can implement these themes in both structural changes but also in cultural changes that need to be made in The Episcopal Church.

ENS: What’s your understanding of the role of president of the House of Deputies? There are constitutional duties, of course, but beyond that, what does this job mean to you?

Ayala Harris: That one’s like an essay question on a final exam! Beyond presiding over the House of Deputies during General Convention and being vice chair of executive council and being vice president of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, the president of the House of Deputies has this tremendous ability to make appointments, which is an amazing opportunity to expand who is in leadership. … I don’t want to overstate this too much, but being someone who represents the voices of clergy and laity in the church is very important and a huge honor.

It’s one thing to have watched President Jennings do this role for the last seven years so closely, and it’s a whole other thing to be doing it. I’m new in the skin of the president and it’s thrilling and scary all at the same time. But with a lot of help and everyone’s prayers, I hope to be able to live into it.

– Egan Millard is an assistant editor and reporter for Episcopal News Service. He can be reached at emillard@episcopalchurch.org.

President Julia Ayala Harris

Julia Ayala Harris was elected president of the House of Deputies by her peers at the 80th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2022. She is the first Latina to hold the position.

She is a first-generation Mexican American, the daughter of an undocumented immigrant, from a large working-class family in the Chicago area. She came to the Episcopal Church 21 years ago, when she was 20 years old, after a crisis of faith in the Roman Catholic church of her childhood and the evangelical church of her teens. In the Episcopal Church, she has continually found healing, blessing, and wholeness in God’s unconditional love. Throughout her lay ministry, she has worked to bring about a church that can share that blessing with all of God’s people.

From her professional, familial, and personal experiences, she is passionate about a multitude of issues such as immigration, LGBTQIA2S+ inclusion, empowerment of women and girls, criminal justice reform, race and ethnicity, disability inclusion and access, sexual harassment and exploitation, as well as justice and peace initiatives.

Read more on the House of Deputies website.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. The campus is a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.