Vigeon Post

"Friends I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you be in agreement and there be no divisions among you." I Cor 1 x
Church folk ought to be celebrating an important centenary this week but you will not find much reference to it . it is exactly a hundred years since an Anglican priest in the USA by name Paul Wattson set up the first Ecumenical week of Prayer for Christian Unity.. He chose the week of 18th to 25th January because it leads up to the feast of  the Conversion of St Paul; he reckoned that was a  good date to use, seeing it commemorates someone embracing an impossible change of heart. The growth of that movement was one of the features of  20th century church life ; and it was immeasurably strengthened by the fact that it became a venture organised jointly by the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church. Fifty years ago when I was still a young priest the week would be observed widely in most communities. There would be daily acts of worship in different churches and often there would be a day when a watch of prayer would be kept from morning to night with people going in and out throughout the day to pray for the coming together of the Christian people as Christ himself would wish it to be.  It is still observed but not - I think - as widely or as enthusiastically as it once was.   Like most human enterprises, prayer, when it ceases to show results, tends to be shelved and alternative strategies employed.. I think perhaps that we don't feel that Christian unity is so important as Christian survival when in so many places the church seems to be gently slipping down the plug hole.  On the other hand perhaps we should realise that a disunited church is a weak church destined to fail.  A church that lives on its own will die on its own.
Of course you only have to read your bible to remember that disunity tends to be the norm for human beings  Right at the beginning it is clear that there is only room in the world for either Cain or Abel but not both. Human beings are notorious for finding it difficult to live in peace together. We Christians are those who profess to have in our faith the secret that will allow God's kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven - a kingdom of justice and peace and goodwill.  But somehow we seem to omit the ingredient from our own spiritual diet. It is perhaps more natural to be like Adam than to be like jesus.  It did not take very long in earliest times for the admiration of the world enshrined in the words "See how these Christians love one another" to be turned into a scornful verdict "Well see - how they love one another - I don't think !"
Unity in the church was always taught as just about the number one priority; but  in reality it has never been really achieved in practice . If you listened to Paul's admonitions this morning you can tell how disturbed he was when he heard that the church congregation he had planted in Corinth was being torn apart by petty rivalries.
Divisions tend to begin locally rather than internationally.  I noticed over many years as a vicar that when I went to a new parish it was not unknown that some folk who did not like the previous vicar would start to come back out of the woodwork. And then of course one noticed that some who had previously been stalwarts were drifting away from the new Vicar who was me ! This reflects the experience of St Paul.  Folk preferred different personalities, different styles of leadership. I'm a Paul man or a Peter man or a Apollos man - there are even those who say I'm a Jesus man.  One of the good reasons why Vicars should come and go a little bit is that if you stay too long then you will end up with a congregation which fits in with his style and personality. And that is never the reason for being a Christian.
As I prepared for this sermon I jotted down a list of factors which prevent the Church giving the impression of unity.  I have already mentioned  the clash of personalities;  there is also a clash of ideology - Christians have  always assumed that there is only one way of thinking about Jesus and that is their way;  that there is only one way of doing the Jesus thing and that is their way.  So in our day we see our own Anglican church world wide splitting apart because their leaders cannot agree on the moral interpretation of Christian living.
But these are the things that we see on the surface. Below there are all sorts of motives that are at work in our souls. There is for example in most of us a need to be right.   This is of course a good thing; but when my need to be right overcomes my love for my Christian neighbour who sees things differently then I need to beware.  Behind the need to be right is often another secret of our soul and that is insecurity. Any idea or action which seems to threaten our peace of mind or our long held suppositions arouses feelings which easily become divisive.  If you make a heavy investment in a faith or a doctrine then anything that seems to threaten that investment will make you fight for survival.  
 For others the idea of change can arouse strong passions.  We don't like changes because we like to have a comfortable arrangement of our hearts and minds which we can live with; things that upset our comfortable pew we see as divisive.  I remember how about 15 years ago when the debate about the ordination of women was in full swing I was surprised to find that my country congregation were not too upset -  for I had always presumed that country folk tended to be very conservative in their attitude to all things new. But talking to Frank my Churchwarden farmer he spoke words of wisdom. "Owen, he said, we farmers have got used to living with change. We used to see it as a threat; but we know now that  if we do not change our farming methods we will go out of business. We now see change as a way into the future; so perhaps the same thing applies to spiritual matters."
Paul in his words to us this morning is telling us that whatever happens we must keep together. We must not let our personal thoughts and feelings spoil our Christ given unity. There is one thing which is anathema to the gospel and that is folk breaking away because they think they have a better Jesus than the next bloke. On the whle the folk who down the ages have been what the apostle calls 'holier than thou' have not had a unifying effect on Christ's church.
Paul's final words to us this morning remind us, what we are doing when we are functioning as a Christian family is not something to which worldly ways of thinking and doing apply.  What we stand for is a faith and a way of life which to everyday ways of thinking is foolishness. One of my favourite sayings is that the task of any priest is to love his people into holiness of life. But it goes beyond that; -  for the task of the church is to love the world into that holiness which will save humanity from destroying itself.  There are only two ways open to the human race. It can either live together in obedience to a powerful authority or it can learn to live in mutual love.  
We must always go back to the words which Johns gospel gives us - he tells how on the eve of his death Jesus prayed that those who believed in him would be ONE. Not one because that is a tidy way of doing things but one - as he said - that the world may believe.  The really sad thing about the church today is that it has been gradually stripped of any kind of authority because what it teaches is at odds with what people see on the ground.  I remember being horrified when my good GP commented to me that when he had a patient who needed some neighbourly good care  he avoided involving Christians. They are [ he said] too bothered about the state of their souls to be  of practical use."  I would of course protest strongly against the verdict but he must have had experiences which led him to that view. He was a very good doctor..  
If we cannot be one then our witness is  always weakened or negated. We are seen as a community which behaves like any other human community. Whereas if we understand our faith rightly God has put us here to represent something different about being a human being. If the prescription of Dr Jesus for the human race was not something radical it would not have been needful to put him on his cross.
We go back to |St John again perhaps and hear him say to Pilate as he stand in court "My kingdom is not a worldly kingdom - it doesn't function like yours does. If it did then my people would fight.  But that is not my scene."  
One of the moments I remember that gave me new insight into my discipleship happened when as a student I took part in a Parish mission in south London. The parish of East Dulwich was a large one with the kind of staff which is only a dream today. The vicar had three curates and a lady parish worker and if you were not in church on a Sunday morning you received a visit from one of the clergy on Monday to enquire if you were ill .   It was also what you would call an Anglo Catholic parish - very High Church with a weekly High Mass with all the trimmings.  I found myself talking to the churchwarden of this highly disciplined church; and he told me how he himself was a cradle evangelical and the worship of his parish church was quite different to what he had been brought up to.  And then he said this: "But when I got to know the vicar I found that he loved the Lord Jesus as I love him - so then the differences fade into the back ground - because we  love the Lord, we can trust each other even if we have different ways of expressing it."   I am sure he was right.  Back in the seventies I was privileged to have a colleague in my parish as a part time parish worker. Doreen had been brought up in an extremely Protestant parish church where they did not even wear surplices and Bishops were regarded with suspicion.  She was a bit wary of working in a church like mine  which lit candles and wore vestments and was eucharistically centred.  So she said she would come to our church to worship for a few weeks to see if she could cope.  In the end she said she would be happy to join us because although many things were strange to her the religion was genuine and that is all that matters.
  In the end you and I are here because at some point in our livs we have come under the spell of our Lord Jesus Christ.  One of the important things about our Lord is that he treats us each individually  according to our needs and our lights - as he did to folk  in his lifetime on earth. We should not be surprised to find that there is more than one way of doing the Jesus thing.  But it is the Jesus thing which is in the end the vital factor.
Paul's words to us this morning are as relevant as they ever were. "Friends I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you be in agreement and there be no divisions among you ."