23rd January 2005

Christ Church  
Morningside

Epiphany III

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

            The 18th – 25th of January is a very special time of year.  No doubt you know what I am talking about.  It’s something I feel sure we have all been looking forward to and have had marked in our diaries since this time last year.  Yes, you have guessed, it is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. 

          The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has a fascinating history going back over 150 years.  I don’t want to take up your time regaling you about that this morning – there is a separate handout in the notice sheet which gives you a blow-by-blow account of how the Week of Prayer got started and has developed over the years.

          As I said, it’s the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity; in fact we a right in the middle of the week of prayer.  You’ll have to forgive me for my rather sarcastic tone – I actually, think the Week of Prayer is very important indeed.  But why should anyone else believe that the Week Prayer is important?  Why do I think it should stand out among many of the other worthy causes that we are asked to support and remember throughout the year?  And should this Week of Prayer have a little more prominence in our own dairies and consciousness? 

          I was born and raised an Anglican.  I come from a long line of Anglicans.  In fact, I am not aware of anyone in our family who was or who has been anything else but an Anglican.  My first memory of Christians from other traditions was when I was about seven.  My family and I were living in southern Germany , which, as you know is heavily Roman Catholic.  Between the ages of five and eight I attended a local German-speaking school.  Religious Education was an important part of the curriculum.  On a Wednesday afternoon the Protestant and Roman Catholic pupils were separated and had separate religious instruction.  The better part, however, came later in the week.  Every Friday, just before lunchtime the local Catholic Priest would arrive at our school.  He would ride up from the Roman Catholic Church on his bicycle, dressed in his black sutane and wearing a black wide-brimmed felt hat.  The Roman Catholic children would then spend the afternoon with the priest, who would hear their confessions, ready for Sunday morning and give them extra religious formation classes.  The half dozen or so Protestant kids got to go home early.  I remember thinking how wonderful it was to be ‘Anglican’, whatever that was… And, of course, everyone wanted to be a Protestant on Fridays!

          I had my second ecumenical experience years later, when I was at university.  During my time as an undergraduate I was very much involved with the College Chapel.  Being St. David’s College, Lampeter, the chapel was, naturally, Church in Wales – Anglican.  Having said that, I did have a number of friends who were very devout Roman Catholics and attended the local R.C. church in the town.  Towards the end of the first summer term my friends invited me to join them at their church one Sunday.  Now it may not sound a very big deal to most of you – I realize that many people who are part of the Christ Church community, and now Episcopalians, have come from a variety of church backgrounds - so it might seem a bit silly to some of you when I said that when the Sunday of my visit came I was quite nervous about going.  So much so that on the way to church I think I even said something like, “my Protestant ancestors would be turning in their graves if they could see me this morning!”  How foolish.  How sad.  How dangerous.  But actually I had never been in a non-Anglican Church before; at least not to my recollection.  Yes, I had visited some of Europe ’s great Churches and Cathedrals (most of which are not Anglican) but that’s not the same – that’s architecture not religion (isn’t it?).

           Of course when I arrived at the church I was greeted not by demons with two heads, neither was I rugby-tackled to the floor and held down while I was sprinkled with Holy Water to cleanse my tainted Protestant soul.  I was welcomed with the same degree of hospitality and slight indifference that you would find in any church – Anglican included.  To my complete amazement I found that the worship in a Roman Catholic Church was almost identical to that you might find in any Anglican church.  We even recited the same Creed!

          Why is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity so important?  From my own experience (and perhaps yours too) I think that the answer to that question is self-evident:

·        The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is important so that we can continue to break down the barriers of suspicion and mistrust – many of which we have inherited from our ancestors. 

·        The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is important so that people don’t have the same fears and prejudices that I used to have.

·        The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is important so that we can recognize that while we might live out our Christian faith differently (and sometimes very, very different ways), we are, in fact, part of the One Church, Christ’s Church; that we are different aspects of the same face, the face of Jesus.

·        And there is an even darker side.  As we solemnly remember the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz this week, and as 27th January marks our national Holocaust Remembrance Day, you don’t need me to spell this out for you.

Now, I don’t think that we do too badly in our neck-of-the-woods.  Indeed one of the things that strongly attracted me to come to Christ Church myself were/are the very good working relationships that we have with other churches in our local area – especially Morningside United Church , Morningside Baptist Church and the Eric Liddell Centre (which is a Christian organization).  We are very blessed to have such good close ties with Christians of other traditions, because as you well know it is not so in other places.

          A few years ago, when I was at St. Paul ’s Church, Troy , (in the U.S. ) our Diocese, the Diocese of Albany entered into a companion relationship with the Diocese of Down and Dromore in Northern Ireland .  We arranged a number of exchanges between Anglicans in the US and Ireland , and it was a very significant experience for everyone involved, especially our young adults.  One of the events that stands out in my own mind is a cross-cultural dinner-dance that I was invited to attend in the town of Lurgan, Co. Armagh. Lurgan was one of those communities that had been radically polarized during the ‘Troubles’; so much so that the ‘Protestants’ quite literally lived on one side of the town and ‘Catholics’ on the other, with very little contact or communication between the two.  To help to foster links between the two communities a number of the local churches sponsored a number of annual ‘cross-community’ social events.  The dinner-dance was one of these.

          At the dinner-dance lots and lots of people came up to us ‘Americans’ and sang the virtues of the event, saying how it had gone a long way to break the ice between two very different communities.  Of course, what kept going though my mind as I listened was the fact that I couldn’t tell the difference.  I couldn’t tell who was a Catholic and who was a Protestant.  Everyone looked pretty much the same to me!  And yet…

           As I said, we are fortunate, here at Holy Corner, at this time in the life of our community.  We are blessed with comfortable relationships with people from lots of other Christian traditions.  But we should never take what we have for granted.  The close relationship that we enjoy now hasn’t always been there – you don’t need me to tell you of the often painful history of the Scottish Episcopal Church.  And so we need to constantly guard against allowing prejudice to creep into our own thoughts and words.  It is so easy to find ourselves saying, ‘those Roman Catholics’, or ‘thank heaven we’re not narrow-minded like those Evangelicals’, or ‘we all know what Church of Scotland people think’…  It is so easy to slip into the language of prejudice, misinformation and judgementalism. 

·        We need to guard against using such language ourselves.

·        We need not collude with others who say such things. 

·        We need – at all times- to remember that we are, in fact, part of the One Church, Christ’s Church; that we are different aspects of the same face, the face of Jesus.

          Allied to this, we might want to think about supporting – with our presence and participation – events that are jointly sponsored by Christ Church and other churches.  It just so happens that there will be a number of opportunities during Lent, Holy Week and Easter for all of us to do just that.  Now, I’m not suggesting that we go to everything, but just one event, one service would be enough.  Something for us to think and pray about.

          There are a few days left in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  There is a prayer card in the Notice Sheet that you can use in your own discipline of daily prayer.  I believe strongly that Christian Unity is something that we should pray about and work towards everyday.

·        To pray for the other Christian Churches – especially in this part of Edinburgh .

·        To pray, in particular, for Christians we find it hard to understand or accept.

·        To use words that encourage and build each other up as we all try to live out our lives as Jesus has shown us and as best we can.

·        To tangibly support efforts which promote greater Christian unity.

·        And to strive and look forward to the day when all of our differences will simply fall away when we are bathed in the light, glory and love of our God.
       
         Simon Justice, Rector
        Christ Church , Morningside, Edinburgh
        23rd, January, 2005

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