WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT CHURCH UNITY...

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POOR JOKE

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson go camping and pitch their tent under the stars and went to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson and says: “Watson, look up at the stars and tell me what you see.”

Watson rubs his eyes and replies: “I see million and millions of stars.”

Holmes replies: “And what do you deduce from that?”

Watson: “Well, if there are millions of stars, and if even a few of those have planets, it’s quite likely there are some planets like earth out there. And if there are planets like earth out there, there might also be life...”

And Holmes says: “Watson, you idiot, it means that somebody stole our tent!”

The joke works partly because Holmes is pompous, and Watson gets hold of the wrong end of the stick... When we think of the concept of Unity we sometimes get hold of the wrong end of the stick and either despair - thinking there’s nothing we can do about it; or worry that it means us all becoming identical standardised grey Christians like robots all “on message”.

Sometimes we need to state the flipping obvious... so today’s pearly words of wisdom are - I hope - a basic look at Unity

HERE ARE THE MAIN POINTS AGAIN...

The readings which have been set for us since Easter Day have all striven to show us the implications of the whole Easter Experience - the three fold experience of resurrection Ascension and Pentecost. In Acts we’ve seen what it meant to the early Church; in Revelation we’ve seen the Easter story from the perspective of heaven; in John’s gospel we’ve unravelled some of Jesus explanation of the Easter experience.

So today - just before we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit next Sunday and the birthday of the Church, we’re given part of what is called Jesus High Priestly Prayer, in which he prays that his followers may be one, to reflect the Unity of Father Son and Holy Spirit.

A unity which was won through the cross and resurrection, and which is his gift and will for His Church. So what does it all mean and how can we begin to understand it when we look around at the very apparent disunity around us?

First an illustration - an imperfect one, but I hope it’ll point us in the right-ish direction...

MY RICH FANTASY LIFE...

I have many fantasies. The one I’m going to tell you about concerns an electronic devise. It’s a gadget. It’s not due to become available in the UK until the end of this year, and it’s made by the Apple Macintosh people who make computers. (see http://www.apple.com/iphone/)

It’s called the iPhone and they reckon it’s going to retail for close to £400 - so it’ll be my birthday and Christmas presents from now until I retire.

Not only is it a phone, but it’s an iPod, and a photo album, and an internet surfer, and an e mail facility and a camera, it’s got maps, weather reports and stock price listings and - best of all - it’s a diary which will talk to the diary on my computer, and I’ll never be late for anything ever again in my life!

And it’s only 2 and a half inches by 4 and a half and less than half an inch thick. And it weighs just 14 stone. (OK: 135g - about 5 oz)

What’s this got to do with today’s gospel?

THE iPhone AND THE GOSPEL...

The iPhone is a unity - there’s only one phone, but it contains a great diversity of functions, looks and purposes. Part of it will keep track of my appointments; part of it will store my photos, part of it will hold my music library... The functions are different, but they are all pulling together in one direction and serving the one piece of kit that is basically a telephone. I suspect that Alexander Graham Bell - to use a theological expression - would be utterly gobsmacked.

So what do Jesus’ words to his disciples about unity mean to us in a fractured Church?

I’d like us to consider the call for unity at three levels:

What it might mean for us:

• a. at St John’s
• b. in the C of E
• c. in the wider Christian community?

a. What does Unity mean for us here at St John’s?

Well look around you and I hope the first thing you’ll notice is that Unity doesn’t - in fact can’t - mean uniformity! Look at the very different people we’re sharing pew-space with... We have got all sorts here. Different colours, different nationalities, different ages, genders, sexualities, experience, politics, opinions... the list goes on.

St John’s prides itself on being an open and inclusive Church - and that must also mean embracing and welcoming those whose views are different from our own. That’s the hard bit!

We are all very different - just like the different functions that go to make up the iPhone which Santa is going to bring me this year. But without the different functions it wouldn’t be an iPhone. Without your gifts experiences and personality we would be poorer at St John’s. We are tremendously different.

And yet we all hang our hats at St John’s. We have found something here, in the worship, in the friendship, in the acceptance, that has “strangely warmed our hearts” (to nick a phrase that John Wesley used when God was made real to him). We describe ourselves as St John’s people. We are not the same by a long chalk. But we are united in that we belong to St John’s; we support St John’s; we love St John’s; St John’s helps to make Jesus real to us.

So at a basic level there’s a unity in our diversity. We may have wildly different expectations, or have come from very different places, but we claim some kind of family tie and unity through St John’s.

We’re not fractionalised into the posh people and the plebs; or the rich and the poor; or the black and the white; or the low church and the high church backgrounds...

And we are growing as a Christian community: in numbers and in our understanding and depth of faith. If we look at the gospel, that’s what Jesus prayed:

“that they [his disciples] may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me...”

[17.23].

In other words when people see the unity we have at St John’s they are attracted to Jesus! What a thought! What a responsibility! But what a gift!

So there’s something here about our unity at a local level here in this church. And it seems a good and effective model. We are doing our bit for local unity. We are not back biting or ostracising each other, we are supporting and cherishing one another in our hugely diverse gifts, experiences and personalities, and we should take great solace from that: St John’s is working! Jesus is the centre of what we do and where we’re headed, we are seeking first the kingdom of God and the other bits are falling into place (that’s a rough paraphrase of what Jesus said - Matthew 6.33)

That gives us some clue about Unity at a local level - what about us as a denomination - the Church of England?

b. What does Unity means for us as Anglicans?

If you read a newspaper or follow the news you might be aware that there are various rumblings within the Anglican community at the moment - most of them to do with sex. Some people don’t like the idea of women priests, or bishops; some people don’t like the idea of a Church that contains anything other than happily married heterosexuals; some people think the Church should be just evangelical, or just catholic, or just charismatic, or just liberal - there are threats of break-aways and some commentators think that the Anglican communion is on its last legs.

I’m not so sure. We’ve always had disagreements and differences in our diversity: I suspect that the differences get worse when we take our eyes off Jesus. When we stop looking to Jesus and start getting het up about what our neighbours are doing, we lose sight of what we’re about - working with God to build up the Kingdom of God.

I don’t know what the answers are to reconcile the Nigerian Anglicans with the American Anglicans, or the pro-women bishop lobby from the anti-women lobby - but I do suspect that we’ve lost sight of what we’re supposed to be about.

I’m not suggesting that St John’s is perfect, but I think our experience shows us that when Jesus is the centre - when our worship, our liturgy, our music, our preaching and praying and loving are centred on him - we seem to be able to live with a lot of difference without too many upsets. Maybe there are some lessons for the wider Anglican communion...

But what about the Church with a capital C? The world-wide church in all it’s denominations?

c. What does unity means for the world wide Church?

A bit of social history first. There are today nearly 34,000 denominations on this planet - who claim to be Christian churches.

The biggest is the Roman Catholic Church, the second is the Easter Orthodox Church and the third biggest are the Anglicans.

In one sense it all started to fall apart in the year 1054. Up until then there had been one catholic church (“catholic” meaning “universal”), under one head - the Pope, based in Rome. In 1054 - what was called the Great Schism happened and the Church separated into what we know today as the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. At the Reformation in the late 14th & early 15th Century various other splits happened in Europe from the Roman Catholic church, including the Church of England, and the Lutheran church. Various other churches such as the Baptists and the Methodist and later the Pentecostals split later on and today there are nearly 34,000 Christian denominations... That’s a huge summary and whistle-stop tour of two thousand years of Church History!

So from this we can see that for more than half of it’s history - from Pentecost until the year 1054 - there was - in title at least - one single church, under a single head.

But things weren’t quite as simple as that and there were very many disagreements and divisions within the church - right from the earliest days. Even within the pages of Scripture we can see one of the first disagreements - did you have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian?

I suppose one big difference was that after 1054 the idea of splitting into separate denominations became a real possibility, and that was accelerated at the Reformation.

So there has always been diversity. There have always been different beliefs, there have always been different local practices and customs, throughout the life of the Church, even well before the Great Schism of 1054.

There have been - and still are today - great attempts to move the various denominations closer together. Theology has evolved:

• Vatican 2 in the Roman Catholic church of the 1960s did much to change attitudes between Anglicans and Roman Catholics;
• Conversations between the Lutheran churches in Scandinavia and Germany and led to the Porvoo and Meisen agreements;
• We are in communion with the Old Catholic churches in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Croatia;
  the various dialogues with the Methodist church is heading in a hopeful direction at present.

SO ALL IS NOT DOOM AND GLOOM

So things are not perfect, but there is being progress towards a more visible unity. Part of this has been fed by both a top-down and a bottom-up movement.

In the top-down movement church leaders have been sitting and praying together, listening and doing theology together - learning from one another and changing.

In the bottom-up movement local Christians in small local Churches Together groups have been talking and listening, praying and thinking together - as we were doing for the Lent course this year.

All this is leading - albeit it frustratingly slowly and tantalisingly cautiously - towards unity. It doesn’t always get reported in the media; but you know what’s been happening in your life time, and I hope you can see a positive movement.

Yes, we do have a long way to go - but again if our experience at St John’s teaches us anything it’s about rejoicing in our diversity, it’s about valuing our differences and it’s about focusing our thoughts, our energies and our lives on Christ. And as we do that we begin to see the glimpses of glory that Jesus spoke about, and we begin to see that the Easter experience leads us into a unity with one another which reflects the unity and love of the Triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Fr Andrew Perry
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea