Press Releases18 Jan 04

Address by Archbishop Neill for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY
Address in the Pro-Cathedral on Sunday 18th January 2004 by
the Most Revd Dr. John Neill, Archbishop of Dublin

Sunday 18th January 2004

Jesus says: ?Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid?. St.John 14:27.

?The unity of the church belongs to its very nature, baptism itself being a sacramental bond of unity. The Body of Christ is one and consequently there is a fundamental communion shared by all who are ?in Christ??..? The General Synod of the Church of Ireland received these words last May as the basis of the understanding of Christian Unity. It was on this basis stated quite bluntly: ?To be visibly one is to be true to the essential nature of the church. So, the unity of the church is both gift and calling. It is already there, given by God, but we are called to express that fundamental communion in a visible way?. (Report of the Committee for Christian Unity 2003)

These words put very succinctly why we bother with ecumenism ? to be the Church is to be united to Jesus by Baptism as the New Testament makes explicitly clear, and consequently to be united to one another. That is what God gives us in Baptism, and it is what we are called to reflect ? and so we speak of gift and of calling.

Our text this afternoon from the Gospel of St.John reminds us that Jesus gave to his disciples an assurance of peace, a peace different from what the world offers, and he urged them not to be troubled and not to be afraid. Once more we have a gift from God on one hand, a gift of peace, and a clear calling on the other, that we should not be afraid.

It is so often our failure to take up the calling that mars the gift that God so wants to give us. Our failure to exhibit the unity that we are given in Baptism means that we simply do not enjoy that gift from God in all its fullness. In the same way we are so full of fear in so many ways that we do not grasp that gift of God that is a peace that passes all understanding. Today?s Gospel reading in the context of a service calling us to Christian Unity encourages us to look at the fears that may be spoiling the peace and unity to which we are called by God in Jesus.

What are we afraid of about Christian Unity? Why is the word ?ecumenism? suspect in some circles? What is holding us back?

We have to be very honest about the roots of the fears that stand in the way of unity. Undoubtedly some fear a unity that would crush diversity, a unity that would be monolithic, a unity that would as it were come from above, far removed from the local let alone the national scene. That fear must be taken seriously. Not unrelated to this feeling is a sense that ecumenism may threaten our sense of identity. For those in the Anglican tradition, would it undermine on one hand our particular liturgical and Synodical heritage? For those in the Reformed or Presbyterian tradition, would it mean having to accept episcopacy? For those in the Roman Catholic tradition, would it destroy the whole structure of authority and universality? For those in the Methodist tradition, would it mean the loss of the freedom and adaptability inherent in church structures? For each tradition too, there is the fear that we may betray what we have received, what our ancestors in the faith have lived for and indeed sometimes died for. These fears matter ? and when we talk about visible unity, it is easy to see how the shutters often come down on the whole enterprise.

Christ is still saying to us his people ?Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid?. When this same Christ spoke of peace, he made the clear point that it was not ?peace as the world gives?. Are we looking for models of the church that reflect more of the world and less of the divine imperative? As a faith that has at the centre the affirmation that in Jesus, God took our nature and became fully human we are not and must not be cut off from the world. The church lives in the world, and exists as an institution within society. There will always be a tension between the worldly models that we adopt for religious institutions and the essence of what the church is as the body of Christ. Different churches in their own institutional life reflect patterns of empires, or of monarchy, or of democratic assembly or court of law.

There is a sense in which the description of what unity might be often reflects more of what one of these institutional models might demand than what visibility of the Body of Christ demands. It is so easy to get into the sort of discussion that is taking so much time in the European Union at the moment ? What does integration mean? What measure of integration do we seek, or can we achieve?

Can we allow our ecumenical efforts to get stuck right at this point? My response is that we cannot afford to allow that to happen. Unity is of the essence of the Church, it is God?s gift to us, we cannot afford to ignore the calling of Jesus Christ to express and make visible that unity.

We give thanks to God for so much that has been achieved. The fact that we do meet to pray and worship together is good news, even if we do not ever worship together at one Altar. The fact that we are prepared to do things together is good news. A very significant event occurred last year that went unnoticed by many. The most widespread opposition to the war in Iraq came from a very united Christian voice across Europe ? and though views differed to an extent within all the churches ? there was one of the clearest messages from the churches heard for a very long time, and possibly that has ever been heard. We give thanks for the determination of many lay and ordained in all our churches to put their basic unity in Christ far above denominationalism, and to commit themselves to working in this way as much as possible. But, we must be honest, we are not doing enough together, and we are not close enough to each other to really reflect our one Baptism into Jesus Christ.

I am going to make two affirmations that I would ask you to ponder. The first is to affirm that the key word for ecumenism today is koinonia, which translates as communion, fellowship, or participation. It is a word about relationship rather than institution. It is a word about people relating to each other and to Christ, and it is a word about churches relating to one another in a dynamic rather than a merely institutional way. It is a word that expresses less about structures, and more about simply being together.

A generation ago at the outset of Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission there was quite a lot of discussion about unity by stages. This was undoubtedly interpreted in a very institutional and structured way. Nevertheless the concept of unity by stages remains very important. We stand much closer in relationship to each other than we did a generation ago, and yet some of the institutions are as far apart as ever, if not further apart. It is vital that we build continually on these relationships that express our existing communion or koinonia and in that way take those steps that can bring us further on the road to making visible our unity in Christ. Institutional religion is under threat, and though each new church quickly becomes somewhat institutional within a generation, we may have to face the fact that some of what we cherish may have to wither in God?s good purposes. Can we look a little more closely of the ways in which we can visibly express our deep relationship that exists because of Jesus?

The idea of koinonia brings together the local level of our ecumenical endeavour as much as the national and international. There is a debate going on within the Anglican Communion of Churches at this moment, and it has been going on for some years, even if made more urgent through recent events. Put simply the issue is whether the Anglican Communion is to evolve towards being increasingly a single international institution or whether it can exist as Churches in different places simply maintaining communion or koinonia with each other. Recent experience has shown that the more we stress the former model, the unified institutional model, the more likely we are to fracture and divide. I think there is a lesson for the ecumenical endeavour here.

The second affirmation that I make this afternoon is certainly not new. Unity divorced from mission is meaningless. The nineteenth century began the modern ecumenical movement with the Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910 which reached the definite conclusion that the failure to seek unity was leading to a failure in mission. The call from that Conference was for a movement towards uniting the Church. At the end of that century, Christians in South Africa were telling us that Apartheid was too strong for a divided Church ? and it was Christians together that broke through that terrible evil.

This land is for many in the world a symbol of divided Christians ? exploited yes by all sorts of other forces, but we cannot deny that our divisions have done Ireland and its Christian witness a great deal of damage.

The mission of the Church in this city must be to make Jesus real in every part of life. This is about our outreach to the poor. It is about our concern for those with addictions. It is about the battle against HIV/AIDS. It is about issues of Justice. It is about the welcome to those from other cultures, it is about encounter with those of other faiths. Making Jesus real in the lives of those who have lost their way, and making Jesus real in the lives of those who have chosen the way of success and wealth, and in so doing have lost what the parable calls ?the pearl of great price? ? all of this is our mission. God has given us each something to contribute to that Mission and we cannot risk drawing back much longer into the security of the way that we have always done everything ? ourselves alone.

Remember the words with which we began, they are words that can encourage us and challenge us ? to accept God?s gift of peace and unity by making it our calling, and having the courage to step forward in place of the fear that so often holds us back: Jesus says: ?Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid?.