'His Eminence Cardinal Keith O'Brien, President of the Bishops' Conference of Scotland and the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, will be the guest preacher at Luss Parish Church which is celebrating 1,500 years of Christian worship at the site.'
You can read the rest here but the thing that catches my eye most is the reported and slightly enigmatic comment of the Cardinal in anticipation of his visit. He says:
"I am delighted to be able to join the congregation of Luss Parish Church and join with them in celebrating 1,500 years of Christian witness in that area. I look forward to praying with them and hope that in the years to come all our Christian denominations will draw ever closer together on the path to true unity."Well, I would like to join the Cardinal in prayer but I am not sure what, exactly, he meant, when he spoke of 'the path to true unity'. Of course, he may look forward to a unity of all Christians under a Roman Catholic roof, and probably he does. I do not. I look forward to Christians everywhere and in every place finding one another and finding visible and practical ways right here and right now in which to give expression to the unity that we already possess as a consequence of the reconciling work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is real ecumenical work, to my mind. It is not about praying for a unity that we do not already have and for which we must strive, but about working to express and enjoy that unity which Christ has already brought about and for which he has once and for all paid a very high price.
Giving expression to the unity that believers have is never an easy business. Here in the Bridge of Don, church leaders have been meeting fortnightly for twenty years. In that time the personnel have changed, as Church leaders have moved on. We have learned how to be friends, how to love, forgive and esteem one another, how to have differences of opinion without falling out - at least, without falling out irretrievably! We have also moved beyond mere coffee-drinking to real sharing, the sharing of worries and uncertainties, failures as well as successes. We still drink coffee, though! We are not on the path to true unity. We are already in true unity. To be fair, we have not arrived at 'perfect' unity, but it is a true unity, if an imperfect one, because it is founded upon a shared experience of Jesus who is, himself, the truth in all of its fullness.
My reticence about events such as the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is that the tone of its accompanying resource material always seems to suggest that we must get on to the way towards unity, and we must continue to pray for unity as though we do not presently experience it. I think that is a simple denial of the work of the Lord Jesus. When he cried 'it is finished', in the infinite depth of all that is summed up in those few words from the cross, Jesus must also have meant that the unity of believers, for whom he died, was accomplished too. His prayer, that we be one as he and the Father are one is not a prayer that we would find and achieve unity eventually. It is a prayer that Christians everywhere would love each other with eternal bonds of compassion, in spite of differences and distinctions.
In these days in which God seems to be shaking our western denominations through enormous financial crisis and bitter theological conflict, the ecumenical movement seems increasingly irrelevant, at least at the institutional level. Union under one roof feels like ecclesiastical whistling in the teeth of a gale. The reality is that ordinary believers who love the Lord are finding one another across the boundary lines of denominations and traditions, and are working out marvellous ways of witnessing and worshipping together.
I give thanks to God for true unity already found to be present and real. If the Cardinal, or anyone else for that matter, wishes to pray for the day when that unity will be perfect, then I will be happy to join in with a hearty "Amen".
Soli Deo Gloria
It reminds me of something CS Lewis talked about in the Screwtape Letters, a phenomenon he called 'The Church And'. Let the church be 'about' something, was his diabolical advice. The church and social activism. The church and gender equality. The church and unity... Then, have the tacked-on extra slowly consume the original church and its function, so that (for example) unity becomes the primary thing, not the worship of God.
ReplyDeleteLewis explored the idea in much greater depth in 'Mere Christianity' (ie Christianity without additions) and I wonder, sometimes, if that book shouldn't be compulsory annual reading for senior church figures...
Unity is, fundamentally, a good thing - there would be no purpose to 'the communion of saints' if it were not. But there are bad sacrifices that can be made in its name, bad decisions that use it as their justification, and there is bad prioritising that can have it as a figurehead. The foremost concern is and must always be to serve God faithfully. It is in so doing that we will find the common ground between us.
Gavin