Exploring Ecumenism

one light: one world

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Some time ago I promised to comment upon the texts in the Churches Together in England publication, one light: one world.  This link will take you to a free download of the volume.  I hope as a Lent discipline to complete the task.  There are actually more texts than there are days in Lent, so I will plod on until I complete the task.

Last time I completed three texts and they can be found as follows:

1. The Lord Our God is One
2. The only Lord
3. God's Faithfulness Surrounds You

The aim of this series will be to test some of the ideas I have written about in this blog against scripture.  This is not an exercise in proof texting but an attempt to dialogue with scripture.  These texts have been selected to illustrate what scripture says about unity.  My question is whether they are incompatible with an emphasis on diversity and the primary act of conversation.  The three initial posts above all observe the oneness of God need not necessarily imply the churches need be one, especially if by being one we mean structural unity.

My hope is of course that by entering into dialogue with scripture I won't prove anything so much as be challenged to develop my ideas about the importance of conversation further.

I will aim to post one a day if I can.  March in particular is a manic month and so excuse me if there are a few gaps!

I will not normally copy out the texts as they can be found in the download or any Bible.  The version used by Churches Together in England is the New RSV.

God's Faithfulness Surrounds You

Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord,

your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones.

For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord?

Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord,

a God feared in the council of the holy ones,

great and awesome above all that are around him?

O Lord God of hosts,

who is as mighty as you, O Lord

Your faithfulness surrounds you.  (Psalm 89: 5-8)

This picks up from where I left off with the last reading.  The love of God is constant compared with human love.  To make a genuine effort to love your neighbour, depends upon the constant love of God.

The Psalmist emphasises the faithfulness of God.  The implication of these first three readings from one light: one world (see the links below) is that we derive our unity from the oneness of God, because we will let one another down and so we are dependent upon the constancy of God.

This does not necessarily imply our aim is for organisational unity between the churches.  It is God who is constant and we need that constancy because we are not constant.  Is it possible for humanity to be constant? 

The implication is that it is not.  The only thing we know is that we are not constant and therefore in need of God.  God's faithfulness implies reconciliation much more than it implies unity.

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• The Lord Our God is One (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The only Lord (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

The only Lord

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, 'Which commandment is the first of all?'  Jesus answered, 'The first is, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.".  The second is this, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself."  There is no other commandment greater than these.'  (Mark 12: 28 - 31)

This is part of a longer story and I have already looked at it in a previous post.  I will not repeat here what I said then but I will make a few points about this part of the story.

The first commandment is the Schema and is almost a quote from the previous passage in this series.  It is almost a quote because Jesus has added the words 'and with all your mind' to it.  Why? 

The second commandment is from Leviticus.  Apparently, given that Leviticus comes before Deuteronomy in the Torah, it would be normal for a rabbi to quote them in the reverse order.  Jesus puts love of God first.

This story is about love.  We should love God because God is one and this is most important.  Why? 

God's love is something we can rely upon.  Because the motives of people are confused, love of neighbour can be a thankless task.  To love is to risk your own well-being for the benefit of others, who might not appreciate the gesture.

The oneness of God means God is reliable, unlike those we are called to love.  So, although the oneness of God does not necessarily point to the unity of the church, it seems unity is only possible through a reconciled church and reconciliation is dependent on the oneness of God.

The Lord Our God is One

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Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, The Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  (Deuteronomy 6:4-7)

In this series of short posts, I plan to consider in turn each of the readings in Churches Together in England's collection of Bible readings, One Light: One World.  My aim is not to present a full exegesis but to ask what each text is saying about unity.

This is a core text for Christians and even more so for Jews.  It is also highly formative for Islam.  Given the immense amount of scholarship about this passage, what more can usefully be said?

God is one but does it follow from this that the church must be one?  I do not see how church unity necessarily flows from the oneness of God.

I argued early in this blog that the mark of oikoumene is conversation.  Conversations need at least two participants.  So, the whole of creation is premised not upon unity but diversity.  And indeed the Christian witness has always been to the diversity at the heart of divine unity in the Trinity.

The challenge is not to become one like God but to be reconciled despite our differences.  Such reconciliation requires love of the one God but also immersion in the generative activity of God.

Strong and Weak Christians

As a vegetarian of almost 25 years, I am alarmed to discover I am a weak Christian!  The problem for Paul, had nothing to do with factory farms and cruelty to animals, though.  He presumably would have had no problem with the characters in the picture, who are ordinary secular butchers (as far as I can tell!)

Of course, Paul, in Romans 14, is referring to those who believe that any activity connected with pagan temples is prohibited to Christians.  Reading this chapter I note three things of interest.

The Discipline of Subversive Ecumenism

Towards the end of December I prepared a paper for the Sheffield Jesus Seminar, organised through the Urban Theology Unit and St Mark's, Broomhill.  I didn't get around to publishing it on this blog at the time.  The paper was in two parts.  The first was lifted from a post I made in April 2009, The First Commandment is One Commandment Not Three.  The paper I was asked to write for the seminar was called 'Jesus and the Discipline of Subversive Love' and I was offered the same passage as I had analysed in this post.

The Seminar took place on 22 May 2010 and I have only this week started to examine the results and I will in a future post pick up a few interesting issues that arose.  Five of us presented papers to about 30 people.  Then five groups spent 15 minutes with each author, so everyone got to comment on all the papers.

So, follow the above link for the first part of the paper and then read the following for the second part.

The Ecumenical Prayer

This summer I am preaching around my circuit about the Lord's Prayer.  There will be three services, it is a rich theme, which could probably support far more than three sermons but sometimes congregations need a break!  My main source is Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels by Kenneth E Bailey.

Bailey has been known to me as a writer for many years.  His analysis of the parable of the prodigal son impressed me during the mid-nineties when I was studying for my Masters in Applied Theology.  His access to Middle Eastern traditions brings rare insight to his writings.

His main focus for the words, Our Father, is upon the second word.  He goes into great detail and there's no point in dwelling on it here, except to observe the word translated in English as Father is universal.  I think we can properly see it as a celebration of oikoumene, understood as the reconciliation of all things, because it affirms God as Father of all people.

I am particularly interested in the first word, Our.  Bailey doesn't have much to say about it but what he does say is very interesting, page 100:

In conclusion the phrase in the prayer is "Our Father" not "My Father".  The Psalms have frequent reference to "my God", and the personal relationship between the God of the Bible and the individual believer must not be ignored.  Yet, as we will see, the Lord's Prayer affirms a family of God that has one Father, and this prayer includes all followers of Jesus in that family.

It may be simplistic to say, whilst God is Father of all, those who pray Our Father are part of God's family.  There are still many Christians who insist their tradition (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) is the one true church and that other Christians are lacking authenticity in some way.  But the family is all who say this prayer. 

I do not deny we are united by more than this one prayer.  However, we need to understand it is a statement of who we are and our collective relationship with God. 

These opening words tell us that when we raise the sword against anyone, we deny the image of God.  When we raise the sword against our fellow speakers of the prayer, we cut ourselves off from God's family.

The Goal of Ecumenism 4: Openness versus Effort

This is the fourth in a sequence of posts based upon Chris James' blog post  The Goal of Ecumenism: Why and how to be one , part V.  The first of these posts is  Why Are We Divided?, the second is  The Visibility of the Church and the third is Ecumenism and Ecclesiality .

I must confess to a degree of impatience with the idea that ecumenism is a some sort of eschatological truth.  Of course I understand that the fullness of God's plan for humanity will not be revealed until the end times.  But how practical is it to assert this truth?  It feels like a cop out: we can't do anything about it now because it is an eschatological truth.

Debt in the Gospels

In the story at the beginning of Mark chapter 2 a paralysed man is carried to Jesus but his four friends cannot negotiate the crowds.  He is taken onto the roof and lowered through it.  The picture, from sacred destinations, shows a golden mosaic of the healing of the paralytic in the Basilica di San Marco, Venice.   

Then things become a bit strange.  Seeing the faith of the friends, Jesus does not heal the paralysed man but forgives his sins.  This causes some of the scribes to question how Jesus has taken upon himself the authority to forgive sins.  To prove he has the authority, Jesus heals the man.

On Being Born Again

If we are to take a radical approach to ethics, we need to understand what Christians mean by conversion.  Let us start with the story of Nicodemus at John chapter 3:1.  The most significant thing about Nicodemus is that he comes by night.