A Call to Unity

A reflection by Ray Anglesea for St Andrew's Dawson Street, Crook:

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Jan 18-25 2014

One of the highlights of my ministerial training was a visit to the Holy Land. I remember being driven by the Sea of Galilee and walking in the hills above, in the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali as mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. It is a particularly beautiful part of the world. Being in Israel of course reveals the contrast between the New Testament land of the mind and the New Testament land of physical reality. To walk in the synagogue at Capernaum, a later building than the one Jesus would have known but on the same site, and from there just to stroll a few yards to the Galilee shore where he met and called Peter and Andrew, James and John is to make the New Testament feel very close in the town that Jesus made his home.

But there were unpleasant memories of that pilgrimage too. Swimming in the Dead Sea was not an agreeable or pleasurable experience. The other disturbing recollection was when a small group of ordinands, myself included, took an early Sunday walk to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the possible site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. We heard a Greek Orthodox Service clashing with an Armenian one, and with other Christian groups each with some stake in different chapels in the church holding their own services. Christian Unity was not obviously evident. But then has it ever been?

In the 16^th century the Christian church in Western Europe was torn apart. The events are well known. Rome’s slothful response to allegations of its corruption and failures provoked vigorous reaction. The need for reform seemed overwhelming. The Augustinian friar Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenburg, Ulrich Zwingli’s influences had soon swept through Zurich, and in due course John Calvin controlled Geneva. King Henry VIII was at first an ally of the Pope but, frustrated by the failure to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, he severed the English Church’s bond with Rome and had himself proclaimed head. The Roman Catholic Church’s reaction to these initiatives led to the summoning of the Council of Trent. It met for three extended periods between 1545 and 1563 and renewed the Church’s teaching, spirituality and discipline. It articulated the stand of the Counter-Reformation. Positions became fixed. Controversy flourished and persecution became common. People were put to death. Everyone of whatever persuasion could appeal to martyrs. The outlook was bleak.

There was more to come. As a result of the Act of Uniformity in 1662 priests in the Church of England sought freedom to live and worship outside the bounds of the established English Church; the concept of non-conformity was borne and the Presbyterian and Congregational churches later came into being. In the 18^th century the Methodist Movement/Church was founded by John Wesley; it became a highly successful evangelical movement in Britain and later in the United States. Wesley’s work also helped lead to the development of the Holiness Movement and Pentecostalism. The search for unity amongst the Anglican, Reformed and Methodist traditions continues to this day with some, albeit small, progress.

At his Last Supper, Jesus had prayed to his Father that all those who believe in Him “may become completely one.” This prayer has a purpose. Jesus longed for the unity of believers “so that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17 v23). The unity of Christians was to be a sign to the whole human race of God’s love for everyone.

When I am tempted to get despondent by the state of the church today and reflect on its history as briefly outlined above I just sit down and read the epistles of Paul to the Corinthians. I realise the search for unity in the church is as old as the hills. Against the fractious background of the early churches Paul’s plea that they should be of the same mind and the same judgement is paramount. The epistle shows just how complicated the idea of Unity had become. All those in the church of Corinth no doubt felt they were following Christ, they had responded each in their own way to his call, but we also discover from Paul’s letter that, nonetheless, even then the church was fractious and divided, with various factions competing for pre-eminence. 

And so ever since Paul’s time different churches have gone their own way. But then perhaps it was inevitable, especially if you do not think that unity implies uniformity. Each of the churches represented down the ages of history has had its own history, its life moulded by events often outside its own control, the debates and discussions that have taken place over the years among its members, each making its contribution to their life today. We should not be surprised that 2000 years of diverse experiences and debates and temperaments have produced diverse churches with different emphases. And even within our own local churches in Crook there are assorted traditions and practices; high and low churches, Evangelical and Catholic, conservative and liberal, social activists and those more quietist in their approach; we all rub up against one another with much of our history in common.

But I do not believe that diversity matters as long as we all recognise what unites us. We have in our respective traditions heard a call to follow Christ. A clue to our unity therefore might be found in our Gospel reading appointed for the Sunday after the week of Prayer for Christian Unity, when we bring to mind the calling, by the Sea of Galilee, of Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John (in the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali). We are not simply hearing a story of something that happened two thousand years ago in a part of the world far distant from Crook, that same Jesus addresses each of us now (in the present tense) as he did to Simon and Andrew, James and John by the Sea of Galilee, and he says to us now as he said to them then: ‘Follow me’.

Follow me implies in our traditions seeking to see the world not though our own so often self-centred eyes, but try to see the world through God’s eyes, and to see what it means to live in a universe that has a loving God at its centre and running through it all, giving it, and us, life. Jesus says follow me, in putting that truth above all others in determining the priorities of our lives. He says follow me in putting the needs of others, including the needs of the poor, the disposed, the infirm and the persecuted at the very least on a par with our own needs and wishes. And above all he says follow me, if necessary even in the path of self-sacrifice, because it is in giving our lives for the sake of others that we find our own true life. It is a compelling but demanding call that Jesus addresses to each of us now, but then, as the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews wrote, “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

That is the glue that holds us together, for all our diversity. Inevitably it will mean different things for different people in different circumstances, but the core remains the same, a response to the call to follow Christ.