Press Releases01 Feb 05

'Unity - where art thou?' - article by Bishop Michael Jackson

First Published in the Irish Catholic (20 January 2005)

UNITY ? WHERE ART THOU?
By The Rt Rev Michael Jackson, Bishop of Clogher

Every year churches are offered a Form of Worship for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Many across the ecclesiastical spectrum of Irish Christianity welcome it and implement it. To some the timing is increasingly unsuitable. It falls right after the Christmas period. January catches us in the trough of our enthusiasm for almost anything requiring any active response. Some would suggest a Week around Pentecost when the weather and the spirits might be brighter and the flame of enthusiasm warmer. Some would argue that the novelty of involvement in specific Church Unity events has worn off for good reason, precisely because much is already happening regularly and repeatedly.

Nonetheless, the period in question, 18th ? 25th January, offers its own challenges to individuals and poses its own questions to institutions annually. The individual and the institutional parts of the church do not always walk hand in hand or talk face to face. The recognition of this tension as something creative and which must not be allowed to be destructive is itself important. In the dark days of January we celebrate the light of Christ Jesus shed not only on ancient Judah but on modern Gentiles, drawing us to the first flicker of the Easter Dawn. On January 25th we celebrate the Conversion of St Paul, the turning of Saul the torturer of emerging Christianity to Paul the servant of crucified Christ. This very ?change of heart? turns an individual from clinical persecution of an institution to loving acceptance by a person. This is vital to any lived Christianity. Therefore The Week of Prayer itself is an Octave preparing us for such a conversion in our day and an invitation to mini-pilgrimage for all who in the words of the Collect for The Naming and Circumcision of Jesus on January 1st faithfully bear his Name, worship him in the freedom of the Spirit, and proclaim him as the Saviour of the world. Such language leaves neither corner nor cobweb for Christians.

The Church of Ireland is committed structurally to Christian Unity both through its central workings and on the ground in its parishes and people. We participate in national and international networks of unity by the involvement of individuals and by financial support assisting the networks to flourish. The Church of Ireland is present throughout the island. The opportunities and pressures differ in various areas of the country. Local personalities play a large part in the strength of common work and witness. Local memories spur people to fresh activity and also impede any coming together. What is abundantly clear is that ?ecumenism? does not grow if it is only ?top down.? It is ?post-hierarchical? but wide open to imaginative leadership. This itself is a coming of age of God?s people irrespective of denomination, even if it often expresses itself in frustration at clergy and churches.

The expression of Christian Unity is not an optional extra, something you or I do with the spare time we have after worshipping God in our own denominational way. Father Michael Hurley SJ spoke of ?ecumenical tithing? as a natural part of our Christian selves. Such expression is the enacted personal response to Jesus? prayer to his Heavenly Father in John 17, the commission to mission on the eve of his Passion offered to all who take up those early challenges Follow me (John 1.44) and Come and see (John 1.46). The quest has matured. The Magi of the Epiphany, after all, moved forward by another route (Matthew 2.12). Structured unification of denominational churches now seems so problematic. Individual churches respond on the hoof in increasingly complex ways to the demands of keeping going as institutions and to the demands for individualized fulfilment and custom-built solutions by people in a world where the a la carte has become the table d?hôte. Spectatorship rather than engagement is the new dynamic of the first decade of the millennium. Yet theological and ecclesiological thinking remain vital to the endeavour of Christian Unity.

Three particular challenges face the Church of Ireland and apply in their own way to other churches as we approach Unity Week 2005:

1. Are mission and unity not two sides of the same coin? Does the God who sends not also gather? The quest for visible unity is not an end in itself but a springboard for mission, evangelism and service inside and outside the churches. Unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity remain the four walls of any church in the tradition of the Nicene Creed. The quest for Christian Unity demands honestly about our own traditions through receiving honesty about the traditions of others. Many are right to be impatient at the inertia of institutions which cannot distinguish between self and service particularly when the same institutions bemoan the incursions of secularization.
2. The tide of time sweeps forward and onward in a rapidly developing Ireland. The immigrant and asylum seeker of yesterday is the Irish person of tomorrow. ?Otherness? is here to stay. Post-Christendom, how does a luxuriant Christian Disunity fare in a well-educated population who are now asking questions about the encounter of Christianity with other world faiths in mutuality and love, rather than in caricature and hatred? A shop window in disarray does not attract customers.
3. The Hard Gospel is a study of Church of Ireland attitudes to ourselves, to others and to situations in Irish society which will not go away. Self-understanding requires self-assessment more than self-justification. To us country-wide this is an experience with a steep gradient. It takes us to the heart of proper questions: Who, then, is my neighbour rather than Who, then, is my approved Christian neighbour? Sectarianism, like fundamentalism, is now seen as a term of insult. However, both still exist. Neither has much room, when push comes to shove, for what is referred to as ?the other? however defined in today?s society. Our self-examination and self-exposure in The Hard Gospel process will, I trust, liberate us for others.
   

The Week of Prayer 2005 takes us into the Churches of Slovakia. The invocation which runs through this Service is: Bind us together in Christ, make us your dwelling place. This is our calling and our call.