Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
23 January 2014
Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, London
Address to Churches Together in
Mayfair
Exodus 19. 3-8
We love to describe ourselves as what the Lord meant us to
be for him, as his own people – a Kingdom of priests, a holy nation. But we are
less keen on the other side of the covenant we entered, when we said, “Whatever
the Lord has said, we will do”.
What did the Lord say? On the night before he died, he said,
“Father, as you and I are one, may they all be one, so that the world may
believe it was you who sent me.” Well, he said it; and we say we will do it.
The trouble is that we have been saying we will do it for
hundreds of years. What we have meant is that we will bring about unity when
other people come round to our ways, and when we can prevail as they submit.
Each of us belongs to a Church body that we think is, in some ways, the right
one; each of us thinks our take on the Truth is truer, at least for us and our
way of thinking; each one of us thinks our Church body is better organised for
the task in hand, or is a more faithful embodiment of the Gospel. Yes; we must be faithful to the vision we have
each been given and the call that each Church body has received. But it is not
the end of the story for any of us. The principle and integrity, to which we
cleave and which appear to keep us divided now, should be seen only in the
light of the unity of the Church from which all derives and to which all
returns. Thus the times when a Church exhorted others to give in, and to come
round to its position ought to be long gone (though some people still try it on).
Apart from anything else, it is futile. For example, we live in an age where
people are loyal to the banks, the shops, the TV stations and the clothing
brands they know; but they feel quite at liberty to change, and not to be
defined by anyone other than what they choose. The more we try to force an
identity on people, the more people will suit themselves, especially if it is
over against others. People will feel they can take this from here and that
from there, making up a Church to their taste, and retuning Gospel message only
to the frequency they want to hear. So, forcing an identity on a Church body
that is not natural to it would undermine what each of us, in our different
Church bodies, is witnessing to as the Truth that we possess: that there is one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father, and one Church in the life of
the Spirit. We are right, each of us, to say we have the Truth and that we are
the true Church – but only if we remember that this will only make complete
sense when we are utterly united and can be seen to be at one. In the meantime,
to be partisan and competitive about our Church is not to be faithful to the
integrity of the faith that we have received and follow in conscience, but to
make it just one more competing choice among many.
The famous 1910 Edinburgh Mission Conference - the start of the
modern ecumenical movement - was a concerted effort to end rivalry between
European and North American Churches in world missionary endeavours. It had
been realised that Churches’ self-interest was an obstacle to presenting the
Gospel. The penny had dropped – the Churches were not one, but many: and people
who had begun to listen about Christ would hear no more, because the noisy
messages of a Presbyterian Christ, a Lutheran Christ, a Catholic Christ were
unbelievable.
When Pope Benedict came to visit us three and a half years
ago, he reminded us in the magnificent Anglican Evensong in the Abbey that,
however far we have come in love and friendship, however closely we work
together on addressing the ills and injustices of the world side by side,
however great our solidarity in spirit is, nonetheless our disunity in living
together the Church’s and sharing in the risen Christ’s own Body at worship
means that, to the world, we fail to give a convincing account of the hope that
lies within us.
Yesterday, Pope Francis said much the same thing, but in his
usual direct way. He said,
It is good to recognise the grace with which God blesses us
and, moreover, to find in other Christians something which we need, something
we can receive as a gift from our brothers and sisters. The Canadian group
which has prepared this Prayer Week has not invited the communities to think
about what they might give to their Christian neighbours, but rather … to
understand what all communities can receive from time to time from the others.
This requires something more. It requires humility, reflection and continual
conversion. Let us follow this path, praying for Christian unity and an end to
this scandal.
106 years ago in 1908, the Anglican rector of
Moreton-in-Marsh, Spencer Jones, and a Roman Catholic Franciscan friar in New
York, Paul Wattson, after six years of correspondence, became so thoroughly
convinced in their own minds of the scandal of disunity that they set up a
Church Unity Octave - a whole week of prayer from 18 to 25 January. The
Anglican believed that his Church, even though it was a towering presence in English
Church and Society as a whole, was nonetheless cut off from the universal
Church of which it saw itself as a part. He was penetratingly clear of the need
for the Church of England and the Catholic Church to reunite, not to change the
Church of England into something it was not, but so that together - and in the harness
of the same faith - they could strengthen each other’s proclamation of the
Gospel - and be believed. At the same time, the Catholic in New York realised
that his Roman Catholic Church, for all that he saw it to be possessed of everything
needed for the Church to be fully the Church of Jesus Christ, is nonetheless
lacking in something: those who do not belong to it! He saw too that it lacked
the many blessings in faith and holiness that had clearly been bestowed on
others in abundance. Surely God did not give spiritual treasure to his People,
so that only some could benefit to the exclusion of others? He longed for unity
and to receive and grow through the same holy gifts. By the same token, he
longed for other Christians to see what he loved in the Catholic Church and
come to love it as a gift for them to long for too. But he refused to pray
against other Churches, or their beliefs. He and his English Anglican friend desired
the Church and the Christians who belong to it to be drawn together in one
Church.
Twenty five years later, a French priest, the beloved Paul
Couturier, was taken up with the same idea. But he saw that Christian Unity,
and the sharing of God’s spiritual riches that we have received while we are
apart, can never be enjoyed by offloading them onto others unbidden, by
imposing them because we think we know better or think we ARE better, teaching
other people what we think they need to learn. No; in the divided Church as it
is in the world, we can only share in these divine gifts, by asking to receive
them, not as little commodities to suit our individual tastes, but as part of
what make the whole Church universal. Couturier had this idea that we could
take on each other’s gifts of God’s blessings and then outdo each other in
growing in them. We could thus vie with each other in advancing in holiness,
drawing closer to Christ from where we started out in isolation, until we were
united in him and found ourselves united to each other. Thus he thought our
parallel lives would converge as we grew in love, and faith and spiritual
knowledge.
Nevertheless, here we are, 106 years after Spencer Jones and
Paul Wattson first became impatient, still disunited. Here we are, a Kingdom of
priests, saying we will do what the Lord says, but not obeying his prayer -
addressed as much to us as to his Father – that we be one, so that the world
might believe. Here we are finding ever new reasons to back up our separations
and to continue to go on in our preferable own way. As Pope Francis says, it is
a scandal. And as the world tells us, with its deeply unanswered questioning,
we are unconvincing.
Yet to lose heart after all these years of prayer together
is to forget what we have seen. The Lord reminds is of “how I carried you away on
eagles’ wings and brought you to me”. We have come so far.
We understand that we do not need all to be the same, in
order to be Christian. The Pope, like his predecessors, reminds us that other
Christians teach us the things we still need. We can attend each other’s
worship and combine our efforts to meet the needs of the world. We draw on each
others’ traditions and are constantly enriched as we do so. This service
tonight is in its way a small miracle. The Ukrainian Church this week is facing
a deep crisis in the country that is its homeland; nonetheless it desires to
play its part as an integral part of the Christian Church here in England. It
brings with it the tradition of ancient Christian Byzantium, in its fusion of
monastic psalms and hymns, with the drama of the light, the incense and the
icons that are at the heart of Eastern Christian devotion to our Lord, as somehow
we pass into the courts of heaven as we worship in the Church below. (Hymns
were not only invented in recent English history - tonight’s come from the
first millennium!) And after Vespers there will be more recent Christmas and
Epiphany carols from Ukraine. Thus English-language Christianity, the liturgy
of the Christian Roman emperors and the music of Ukrainians all come together,
as do we, joined by beauty in worship and hope.
In this giving and receiving, it is as though there is
something in our Christianity - when it is truly the faith of Christ - that is
restless for as long as it is not the faith that can be shared with and
embraced by all who love and follow Jesus our Lord. We have been learning for
years, almost without noticing, to go beyond ourselves, so as to find how to be
more truly the Church that is Universal, with the whole faith, in the whole
Christ, for the whole of humanity. We have all looked at our Churches and asked
ourselves, “Can we imagine what more can be added, what new space can be opened
up in our Church, so that it can also be the home that others can recognise as
their own?” All of our Churches have acted on this questioning in the past, and
it has made us what we are today. For instance, the Catholic Church has learned
not to be a monolithic institution but a communion of Churches, movements, and
new ideas that can embrace people in the way that God has called them to hear
his gospel. We have our parishes,
priest, bishops, dioceses and religious orders, but we also have our new
lay-led renewal and evangelical mission movements, offering and exploring new
ways of being the Church for England’s people.
The Catholic Church does not wish simply to be a Roman Catholic
denomination, but to be more and more like the universal Church, honouring and
embracing the Church of others on their own terms but in complete communion of
united life and faith. I like to hope that the Ordinariate, for instance, will
one day come to be seen as a way for the Catholic Church to embrace a religious
tradition from which it was once estranged and live out in a prophetic way that
Anglicans and Catholics can live as one in communion, united not absorbed, not
amalgamated and assimilated, but in the lively, diverse, abundant communion of
all the People of God in the one Body of Christ His Son. There is great
ecumenical potential to be tapped and it should bring us close in respect,
understanding and conscientious faith.
Likewise the Salvation Army, which every Christian in this
land loves and rejoices in, represents a movement that was organised to meet
the needs of the poor and destitute, and to bring them to the love of Christ on
his Cross, in a way that no other Church could at the time. It still meets
those that not all of us can. We have all gained so much from the gift of
confidence in each other and trust from God that means we can do this work
alongside each other, with mutual encouragement and mutual reliance. The Church
of England, too, with its cultural-spiritual heritage, its liturgical and
musical tradition, as well as its pastoral mission visible and active into
every corner of the country, is a resource for the whole Church that is never
static. For instance, it has sought to be imaginative in fresh expressions of
Christianity that can meet the religious awareness of contemporary people but
still take root in the wider Church. Even the Grosvenor Chapel began as a “fresh
expression,” addressing unmet needs, and to this day creating distinctive Christian
community. From all this, in a bewildering world of beliefs to choose, both sacred
and secular, we learn that none of us can make it separately. We rely on each
other, not only for aid and support, but for learning more about how Christ’s
is the pattern we live as His Body, the pattern for the whole of humanity that
stands in His image.
Thus the prayers of 106 weeks of prayer have been richly answered.
The miracle of unity, when it is achieved will be God’s. We can take down our
sinful man-made barriers and persist on the journey whose destination was
determined at the outset. We should not fail to see how the Lord has taught us to
turn to each other in our need to learn, and moreover planted that seed of
imagination of how it could be - what it would be like - if we in our currently
separate Churches could live as one, solid Church, a rock that the world could
rely on and believe when they see it.
