15th June 2011
Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley 05 June 2011
Lessons -- Psalm 133; John 17:1-11,20-26
I pray that they all may be one; even as you Father are in me and I
in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that
you sent me. (John 17:20ff)
It is most appropriate that we should worship together at the start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In joining a fine tradition of ecumenical co- operation stretching back 100 years we rejoice that many old denominational hostilities have been replaced by signs of friendship.
We are reminded that Christian unity, our unity in Christ, is the Church's sole reason for being. We come together to confess our common faith in 'the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church' (Nicene Creed) and to be reminded that we are 'in the world' but not 'of the world'. We are to point 'the world' to the One in whom God's self-giving love 'for the world' has been embodied.
This is what Jesus means by asking his 'Father' to unite his disciples, then and now, in a common unity of faith: a community where it is a delight to 'glorify' God and be a sign to the world of the love between the 'Father' and the 'Son' at the heart of the universe ('before the foundation of the world' v24). This is a word of hope, not for the religiously inclined, but for 'the whole inhabited earth' (as seen in the World Council of Churches symbol).
In the twentieth century Church Union was a high priority for many Christians. It was a welcome change from the days of bitter sectarianism and a healthy sign that the churches were prepared to work together to spread the Gospel throughout the world. The World Council of Churches was formed in 1948. United or Uniting Churches sprang up in Canada, North and South India and Australia. Ecumenical dialogue between Roman Catholic Church, Protestant and Orthodox Christians became a regular feature of Church life around the world. Local inter-church councils sprang up and ecumenical services became common. Inter-church task groups discussed big issues facing all Churches in the modern world.
Sadly, however, much ecumenism has grown tired. Nowadays our unity is seldom marked by robust engagement with each other on the great challenges to Christian faith in a relativistic age where truth and human dignity are often abused. Too often our unity is based more on good will and friendliness than on enthusiasm for the mystery and splendour of God's redeeming grace in Christ and our desire to make it known to a world largely devoid of hope!
Weariness is not the only challenge to our unity 'in Christ'. We seem to want 'peace at any price' and are more concerned to maintain a rather shallow unity that is not grounded in the unity of Father and Son (as expressed in Jesus' prayer for the Church). Many ministers and Church members think that such theological and ethical concerns are barriers to true unity. Let us set aside our differences on small and large matters alike and get on with being nice to one another!
Instead of building on the fine ecumenical consensus expressed in the classical creeds (Nicene Creed / Apostles Creed) and helping modern Christians to take pleasure in God's revelation in Christ, so many of us want to base unity on 'accepting our differences' on the great issues of the day. The key thing is to be tolerant of each other's different points of view and compassionate to those who make a variety of choices about what they will believe and how they will behave in relation to sexuality, marriage, euthanasia, abortion and the like.
Under the cloak of unity, however, a new tyranny has emerged. Those who, on the basis of the ecumenical consensus forged from Scripture and our classical theological heritage, dissent from this shallow consensus are often silenced and marginalised. Thus a different kind of unity, not grounded in God's revelation in Christ but on diversity, is now treated as the rule of faith.
The critical question for the churches today is whether our unity is in 'difference' or 'in Christ'.
There is of course scope in the Christian community for the richest and most wonderful diversity! Men, women and children from every culture, nation, colour, appearance, economic circumstance, social class are baptised into the 'faith and family of Jesus Christ'. All are welcome to believe the Gospel -- that in Christ's life, death and resurrection, God has graciously reconciled the broken world to himself and calls us to 'hunger and thirst after righteousness' in the world.
But that does not mean that 'difference' as such is a virtue! Prophets and apostles have been saddened and angered by a variety of beliefs-and- practices which caused 'disunity' in examples such as pagan spirituality, greed, envy, sexual immorality, pride, anger, strife, neglect of the poor, lack of love for the sinful. Again and again the fallible community of faith has had to be re- called to its missionary vocation: to be united in testifying to the glory of God in the world.
Christian unity -- unity in Christ -- is not to be found by balancing competing beliefs and practices. That is often what ministers think they should do and what congregations expect of their ministers, and what members of inter-church councils often aim to achieve. It is the unwritten rule that often governs conversations, decisions and pastoral work within congregations and between denominations.
In stark contrast to this shallow unity, a truly ecumenical unity is grounded in the empty Cross of the 'Son' who, with the 'Father', has defeated the dread power of evil and death for the world. Our true unity as flawed human beings is found in the grace that flows from the love between the Father and the Son, as John puts it in Chapter 17.
So when Jesus prays that disciples 'may be one', he is speaking of a unity that is unlike any other. It is not based on shared feelings or common interests. It is not naive about our ability to build a harmonious world.
Indeed, as persecuted Christians know so well, there will be much tribulation for those who are 'united to Christ'. It is grounded in the love between Father and Son (v21b) which existed from 'before the foundation of the world' (v24). Our unity is shared with Jesus' disciples -
- then and since -- and proclaimed as the one place in history where there is hope for our fractured world.
Because it is not natural to seek this unity we must earnestly 'pray for Christian unity'. Today, when the Christian family itself is fractured, this is an urgent and necessary task. The divisions within and between Christian communities are a scandal.
Is it any wonder that the world is sceptical about Christianity? Is it any wonder that we have come to believe that Christian faith is a purely personal matter not based on the great ecumenical affirmations about the embodiment of God's love in Christ? Is it any wonder that vague, self- centred spirituality has displaced doctrinal and ethical fidelity to Christ as the measure of our faith and unity?
We must pray for the kind of Christian unity that is grounded in the incarnate, crucified and risen love of God. Despite obstacles to formal union and recognising the need to engage one another on the grave matters that still divide us as Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox, we must find a common voice on the major questions facing humanity. In this way, albeit as a broken community, we can bear witness to the love between Father and Son that reaches out to embrace humanity in the divine love.
To bear witness to the One who makes true community possible, we will have to stop thinking that 'Christian unity' is based on 'accepting our differences'. If we persist in that mistaken idea, then ecumenism will be more concerned with religious survival and inter-church friendliness than to 'glorify God' as disciples of Christ who are called to live in the midst of an often hostile world.
Today gives us an opportunity to re-think what it means to be 'united in Christ'. Christians are to be united for the sake of the world where evil, affliction and death hold sway. We need to remember that we are called together to point the world to the glory of God as embodied in the love between the Father and the Son. That is why we must 'pray for Christian unity' -- for a genuinely Christian unity -- in a world and a Church that often exhibits disunity in so many places.
At a time when increasingly in our society God is despised, human dignity is demeaned and shallow consensus is preferred to the great Ecumenical consensus inspired by Scripture and tradition, it is vital that we pray that the Father and the Son shall be glorified. The world, and the Church, need to know the unsurpassable love of God for flawed humanity and our disordered world.
To this end then let us pray that our unity may reflect our high calling in Christ so that our ecumenical friendships may deepen and flourish and bring hope to the world.
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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.
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2 people have commented on this entry
Apt and timely comments. Surely Max is right about the narrow-minded calls to unity: surely these kinds of calls have produced exactly the opposite effect. The latest example of dis-unity must be the Catholic Theological College closing down and not continuing, after 30 years of cooperation, theology teaching with the the UCA’s Uniting College for Theology and Leadership in Adelaide. This comes on top of the Anglican Church also breaking away from that UCA college last year.
Our heritage as a church of the European reformation and English evangelical revival doesn’t just throw up barriers to other denominations, there in are resources for understanding better, what Max properly points to as foundational, the historic ancient creeds.
John Wesley had ideas this: he never sought disunity for his Methodist movement from the Church of England that tolerated him. The Basis enjoins us to “listen to the preaching of John Wesley… so the congregation of Christ’s people may again and again be reminded of the grace which justifies them, through faith, of the centrality of the person and work of Christ the justifi er, and of the need for a constant appeal to Holy Scripture.”
Wesley Sermon 34, “Catholic Spirit”, does not make unity an end in itself - a notion that runs counter to the secularity of the 20th Century ecumenical movement that gave rise to the Unity Church. (If there is a reason for the punishing ‘unity at the cost of reason and one’s soul’ approach of the Uniting Church, then it has it’s a root in the Basis of Union embracing unreconciled notions of unity and faith.)
Wesley takes as his text 2 Kings 10:15. “Is your heart true to my heart as mine is to yours?” He draws conclusions: paragraph 3.1
“We may learn, first, that a catholic spirit is not an indifference to all opinions… You who don’t know what you believe, you call yourselves a catholic spirit, only because you are of a muddy understanding; because your mind is all in a mist; because you have no settled, consistent principles, but are for jumbling all opinions together. Be convinced, that you have quite missed your way; you don’t know where you are. You think you are into the very spirit of Christ; when, in truth, you are nearer the spirit of Antichrist. Go, first, and learn the first elements of the gospel of Christ, and then shall you learn to be of a truly catholic spirit.”
Isn’t Wesley described exactly the befuddled state of mind of the UCA leaders?
Or how about this paragraph in which Wesley gives, typically, definite ideas about how to go about approaching unity with our brothers and sisters in Christs.
” 3.4 But while he is steadily fixed in his religious principles in what he believes to be the truth as it is in Jesus; while he firmly adheres to that worship of God which he judges to be most acceptable in his sight; and while he is united by the tenderest and closest ties to one particular congregation, —his heart is enlarged toward all people, those he knows and those he does not; he embraces with strong and cordial affection neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies. This is catholic or universal love. For love alone gives this: catholic love is a catholic spirit.”
And another paragraph likewise, surely has pertinent points about clarifying whom we worship, what grace is given to our hearts, and what courage and clarity we approach our brethren.
“3.5 If a person of catholic spirit is one who gives his hand to all whose hearts are right with his heart: one who knows how to value, and praise God for, all the advantages he enjoys, with regard to the knowledge of the things of God, the true scriptural manner of worshipping him, and, above all, his union with a congregation fearing God and working righteousness: one who, retaining these blessings with the strictest care, keeping them as the apple of his eye, at the same time loves—as friends, as brethren in the Lord, as members of Christ and children of God, as joint partakers now of the present kingdom of God, and fellow heirs of his eternal kingdom—all, of whatever opinion or worship, or congregation, who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; who love God and man; who, rejoicing to please, and fearing to offend God, are careful to abstain from evil, and zealous of good works. He is the person of a truly catholic spirit, who bears all these continually upon his heart; who having a tenderness for their persons, and longing for their welfare, does not cease to commend them to God in prayer, as well as to plead their cause before people; who speaks comfortably to them, and labours, by all his words, to strengthen their hands in God. He assists them to the uttermost of his power in all things, spiritual and temporal. He is ready “to spend and be spent for them;” yes, to lay down his life for their sake.”
(I have modernized Wesley’s language myself.)
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/21 at 12:24 PM
Max remarks that ‘Christian Unity’ in the Uniting Church is based on ‘accepting our differences.’ It is a mistaken idea, as Max says, but it is found in the foundation document of the Uniting Church, the 1959 report of the Joint Commission on Church Union, “The Faith of the Church.”
After applauding the great witness and confession to Christ of the various, separate denominations that would enter union, and after proclaiming the centrality of Scripture and creed and the headship of Christ, the report insists: page 43 C(b)
“We would demonstrate our justification by faith through seeking further to demonstrate the Church’s unity. It is questionable whether a divided Church can preach a doctrine of justification by faith. As long as a man may choose between one of the several churches, there is hidden from him the essential words, ‘you have not chosen me but I have chosen you.’ Only the Church manifesting its unity can present to the world the message that in Jesus Christ alone men are redeemed.”
So this first report insists that until then, Christ has done quite well convicting individuals in different churches, but from now on, the efforts of churchmen (and women) are needed to unite the churches to present a united face to the world.
If the falseness of this idea wasn’t absolutely crystal clear to these church leaders from the confessional theology of each of the three former denominations, it is now crystal clear to the entire world from the results. The Uniting Church is a shrinking organization of ridicule in the world. It is evident God works in and abundantly blesses single-congregation denominations.
We are united with our brothers and sisters by the Christ who is in us, and as Max says, to point the world to the glory of God as embodied in the love between the Father and the Son.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/24 at 01:22 AM