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The week of Prayer for Christian Unity

We have perhaps become a little stale in our observance of this week. Twenty five years ago we were often rather suspicious of each other. Some of us would never even have entered each other’s churches. But there was a growing feeling that if we were to witness effectively in the world, Christians needed to present the gospel together. Many churches entered into Local Covenants, as a sign of commitment to learning to know each other and work and witness and worship together. What follows is an account of the beginnings of one such Local Covenant, which might form a focus for a review of how churches have progressed in other areas, and form a springboard for renewed effort. This Covenant was made between Roman Catholic, Methodist, Anglican and Baptist churches.

As people came into the Baptist Church, where the chairs were arranged in the round, they found the circle divided by a wall of cardboard boxes, labelled with words identifying divisions between the churches, such as priesthood, authority, free prayer, abortion, infallibility, ordination of women, infant baptism . . .

The explanation of the wall

Since time began, people have built walls: to defend their territory, to protect their property, to exclude others, to give themselves security. Church people are no exceptions – from being people who were remarked on as having all things in common, we developed through the ages into groups which excluded each other from Communion, and denied each other’s integrity. Our wall is built of deeply held beliefs, deeply rooted prejudices, half understood fears, inherited misunderstandings. From where you sit, some of the obstacles seem insuperable. From your neighbour’s angle they may appear to be trivial, irritating stumbling blocks.

At times, the wall has been so high that it was impossible to see over it. Those on our side seemed to be the only ones who believed the truth. More recently, the wall has begun to crumble. We have seen that there are people outside our own tradition who are very like us in belief and practice. They even now talk something like the same language. Occasional forays over the wall have taught us that we are not so very different, and even if we don’t feel that the grass is greener, at least we have discovered that it tastes remarkably similar. Here our wall is quite low, but it is still there. Some of the beliefs and practices it symbolizes will not yield easily to our attempts to understand and appreciate them. Some will never be congenial to our different tastes. But tonight, in coming to sign this covenant we are coming to offer to God not only our desire for deeper unity, but also our fears and hesitations and our unwillingness to change. We are going to proclaim again our belief that God can and does use the raw material of our lives and transform it into the means that he will use to redeem the world.

We are going, symbolically, to turn our wall into a Cross, and we shall see that the things that divide us are also the things that in Christ will unite us. And in the centre of the Cross is the focus of our activity tonight.

At this point, representatives of each of the participating churches moved the top layer of boxes from the wall, and placed them to form the arms of the Cross, with the table at which the Local Covenant was to be signed at the centre.

We have moved on from those days. Real friendships have been made across the denominational edges. People now are much more accepting of each other’s different ways of understanding their faith, and of their different practices. We have begun to work together in our local communities. But we are still divided.

Michael Lloyd, in Café Theology says:

The cross is the great act of wall demolition. The church is to be the community that lives in defiance of the walls that divide our world, not the community that erects more of its own. If I were an atheist attempting to demonstrate the falsity of the Christian faith, I would not take my stand on the problem of evil, nor would I focus on the historical basis of the Christian faith. No, I would concentrate my fire on the disunity of the church. Here is far more fruitful territory . . . The cross is supposed to have broken these barriers down. The church is meant to be the new society living across the divides that riddle the rest of humanity. But the church is as riddled with division as the rest of the world. It is to my mind the one nearly unanswerable argument against the truth of the gospel.6

He goes on to say: ‘We need to make every effort, not just to maintain the unity of the Spirit, but to recover it and to live it. We need to help the world to believe by living out the unity that proclaims there is one God. It is an evangelistic imperative as well as a matter of integrity.’

Robert Frost in his poem ‘Mending Wall’ says:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.7

Another American poet, Edwin Markham, wrote:

He drew a circle that shut me out −

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in.8

In a review of growth in unity, it might be helpful to ponder these questions:

1 If you had a wall like the one described above, how would you label the boxes in your own area?

2 What steps have you taken in your area to break down barriers?

3 What would help you to be more effective in mission?

Looking to the future, we might ask, how has the life of churches in the area changed? Who else might be drawn into closer fellowship? We have a call to mission, set out in 1 Peter 2, 4−5, and 9

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals, yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.

9. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

What kind of wall might we build now?

Questions to ponder

1 What gifts do you bring to your wall of living stones?

2 What is the purpose of your wall?

3 What help do you need to build it to God’s design?

Notes

6 Michael Lloyd, Café Theology, Alpha International, 2005.

7 Robert Frost, ‘Mending Wall’, North of Boston, Henry Holt and Co., 1915.

8 Edwin Markham, ‘Outwitted’, The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems, University of Michigan Press, 1915.