The Seventh Sunday of Easter, The Sunday after Ascension Day
16th May 2021, Clapham
“Father, protect them in your name ... so that they may be one, as we are one.”
A year ago there was a firm feeling that “We are One”, as we stood together outside on a Thursday applauding our NHS ‘heroes’ [2] at the height of that period in time when we were truly dedicated to keeping to the Covid rules and protecting each other for each other’s sake. But as we’ve since found, unity of that sort is hard to sustain. Self-interest, self-assertion is back: being our brother’s keeper went out of fashion sometime well before last Christmas.
But the church insists, We are One. Because Jesus asked his Father to make us one. The pursuit of unity is central to the way of Christ. We tread this path on difficult ground. It requires that we overcome our ideas of unity that aren’t modelled by Jesus and his Father, it leads us into territory strange and maybe even frightening to us.
I’ve always been exercised by this challenge, having grown up in the divided sectarian city of Liverpool in the 1970s and influenced by the Anglican and Roman Catholic leaders Bishop David Sheppard and Archbishop Derek Worlock whose visionary, and at times sacrificial leadership inspired the city’s people to overcome their religious divides, so that by the time they retired it truly was a different place.
Their friendship showed me how it is possible to overcome our human instinct to unite against others who are not like us, those who belong to other tribes. I saw it again in later years when leaders on all sides of the Northern Ireland conflict found ways to sit at table together and - following years and years of stops and starts - arrived eventually at a unity. And I have been most profoundly moved by the ongoing work of reconciliation between Jo Berry, whose father Sir Anthony Berry MP died in the IRA bombing of the 1984 Tory Party Brighton Conference, and Pat Magee, the IRA man who planted the bomb. 21 years after their first meeting and after since regularly speaking together at conferences worldwide, they have not reached a point of complete reconciliation, and maybe never will, but they continue to journey together to seek an understanding of each other, or as Jo Berry puts it, “to recover some of of our humanity.” [3]
“Father, protect them in your name ... so that they may be one, as we are one.” Protect them from thinking that unity in Christ demands any less than our reaching out of ourselves towards those unlike us, sometimes radically, sometimes sacrificially.
When it comes to seeking unity around a particular issue - in the Church of England today that may be same-sex marriage - some Christians exercise their strong identity characterised by hostility towards Christians holding different views; they’re energised by the fight against a common enemy: those on the opposite side of the argument.
Other Christians may express a benign but neutral attitude to such debates; congenial but passive, disinterested, displaying a politeness which might be masking a multitude of dislikes, and disapproval.
In a world where ‘things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’, the century-old words of WB Yeats sadly still seem to hold true when it comes to the church and its moral debates: ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.’ [4]
Unity based on a weak-benign identity lacks the depth to engage the challenges of resolving differences. And unity based on a strong-hostile identity just perpetuates hostility.
Is there a third way in which we may find unity whilst embracing our differences? Can we develop a strong and benevolent identity? Strong - meaning firm in our faith, rooted in scripture and confident in God and in our own skin; and benevolent - meaning open to others outside our group, open to those with whom we may passionately disagree or whom we avoid, open to them in unaffected generosity of spirit. Surely this is God’s intention, who “created (us) for harmony with one another, in dynamic unity without uniformity - different but not divided, distinct but related and unified.” [5]
Jesus’ commanded us to love our neighbours and our enemies, to pray for our persecutors. He lived out those values in his relationships with all kinds of people and places, by bringing together around meal tables people who would never usually meet. On the cross he demonstrated his love for all. Crucial for Jesus was his relationship with his Father, cultivated in prayer, a constant conversation, a deepening understanding. The remarkable centrepiece of John’s gospel is this extended heartfelt prayer of Jesus expressing his deep desire that those who have been drawn together by him may enjoy that same unity with the Father that he enjoys.
This strong love, this complete openness to the Father, is the foundation of a strong and benevolent identity, in which we believers, united in God, despite all our differences, can embrace each other in unconditional love.
“Christians often feel embarrassed by conflict and seek to avoid it. Our great diversity and the tensions over our differences can seem debilitating. Yet God is always in the midst of conflict, prompting bridge-building and transformation because the life of God is shaped towards reconciling.” - It’s good to see that the Anglican Church has recently launched Reconciliation Initiatives, a programme of training aiming to “equip Anglican Christians and their communities to handle disagreement more confidently and skilfully, and to be agents for reconciliation in wider society.” [6]
And just now in the Church of England we are being asked to engage together over questions about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage. [7] “What does it mean to live in love and faith together as a Church” around the question of same-sex marriage? Some may start out passionately strong and hostile in our opinions on this, others may be disinterestedly weak and benign; we may be impatient for change or unsure of where we stand, but for all of us in our diversity it’s a conversation we need to have.
May the Father, who created us for harmony with one another, guard us against those fallen forms of unity which divide and destroy our relationships with his good earth and its people. May he unite us in a love for others which breaches the barriers between us; may he make us strong and benevolent believers, confident in our relationships with each other, with our Lord Jesus, and with him. Amen.
John Davies
Notes
[1] This sermon draws on We are One? Cultivating the strong-benign identity, preached at Queen Camel, 2016, a revision of Being One, 'as we are one', preached at Sutton Montis and Weston Bampfylde, June 2014.
[2] Charlotte Higgins, Why we shouldn't be calling our healthcare workers 'heroes'. Guardian, 27 May 2020.
[3] Wikipedia: David Sheppard, Wikipedia: Derek Worlock; Jonathan Powell, Talking to Terrorists: How to End Armed Conflicts and Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland; Jo Berry and Pat Magee: The Forgiveness Project
[4] WB Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919.
[5] Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?, p.95-96.
[6] Reconciliation Initiatives.
[7] The Church of England, Welcome to the Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith website.
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