Homily for Church Unity Sunday
This is Church Unity Sunday, the culmination of the annual Week of Prayer for the Unity of all Christians. The practice of holding this special week of prayer annually began almost forty years ago when Pope John announced his decision to call the Second Vatican Council. That assembly was immensely important for a number of reasons and it made many, many far-reaching decisions that have changed forever the face of the Catholic Church. But, when the dust eventually settles, as eventually it must, one factor of importance will stand head and shoulders above all others; and it is as follows: for the first time since the 16th century Reformation, the Catholic Church acknowledged that it had no monopoly on God or on the truth. It acknowledged the sincerity and validity of other roads to God. It acknowledged that the Protestant Church, by constantly stressing the importance of Scripture, did all Churches a service. The Catholic Church confessed its own sin by acknowledging that it had indeed neglected the Bible through the ages. The Protestant Churches, for their part, confessed that they had been negligent and sinful by failing to acknowledge the power of the sacraments in the life of the Christian.
This new-found mutual respect was a far cry from what had gone before. Up to this point, what passed for fraternal dialogue was nothing other than an unhealthy exchange of insults. Until then, the only thing that the Catholic and the Protestant traditions held in common was a profound disrespect for each other. Somehow, in the late 1960s and early 1970s the churches came of age, officially at any rate. They began to recognise and acknowledge the valid insights of rival creeds. Or, as St. Paul puts it in his letter to the Corinthians: "There is a variety of gifts but always the same spirit; working in all sorts of different ways in different peoples, it is the same Lord who is working in all of them." Respect has replaced suspicion. Or at least that is the theory.
All denominations are in agreement that Church unity is a desirable goal, and that disunity and disharmony damages the gospel that we all promise to serve and spread. All with the exception of Dr Paisley and his ilk, that is! But what do we mean by 'unity'? Are we still working under the old assumption that the only unity worth having is the conversion to Protestants to Catholicism? Let them come in with their hands up? While we may not admit to this assumption today, I suggest that it still exists, and not very far beneath the surface either. If we don't mean total conversions, we mean total uniformity, everyone worshipping and praying in an identical manner? This hardly honours the variety that Paul found so enriching in his day. This craving for uniformity is a relatively recent phenomenon in Catholicism. Of course it's compounded today in Rome's obsession with centralising everything. For example, up to 1904 bishops were elected locally and that election was simply endorsed by Rome. That wouldn't happen today.
The scandal of Christian division has been nowhere more apparent or more poisonous than in our own country. Up to recent years, we had the unique but dubious distinction of being the only country in the Western Europe that still produced people who kill in the name of religion. Both religions, Catholicism and Protestantism, are thereby reduced to tribal flags of convenience. Despite everything, both the Catholic and the Protestant churches have come a very long way in a relatively short time. It is fashionable today to criticise our Church leaders. They are often portrayed as out of touch, weak, intellectually undistinguished. However, we should remember that, over the last thirty years, the leaders of our mainline churches have been prophetic voices, often crying in a political wilderness. The leaders of both main Churches in particular kept the Christian precept of forgiveness to the fore. On particularly dark days, when the whole country looked as if it might slide into anarchy, the church leaders were often the only voices of reason to be heard. Our churches have become instruments of unity rather than agents of division. Yet we must not be complacent.
Despite forty years of ecumenical searching, I think all of us here could put hand on heart and admit, 'I know very little about the Protestant faith and practice'. The same would probably apply to the congregation over in St. Nicholas' this morning. Most of our misunderstandings and, more critically, indifference, has its source in mutual ignorance. And the key to this resolution is to be found in the words of Jesus found in today's gospel: "Come and see." Unless we meet one another, get to know one another, and even get to like one another, all the theorising and tokenism will remain just insubstantial candyfloss, mere window-dressing. As the majority Church, it is we who are obliged to make the generous move. Because in an increasingly secular age, domestic bickering about obscure theological points is truly a scandal. "I'm for Paul, I'm for Apollos, I'm for Cephas? Has Christ been parcelled out?" Outsiders today could be forgiven for asking the same question.