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Lenten Lecture by Fr Kieron O'brien - at Christchurch 23rd March 2009

An erudite lecturer was asked to give a major address in China, he duly obliged, but his words of wisdom had to be interpreted simultaneously because he spoke not a word of mandarin. So he proceeded with his lecture, but was a bit distracted that his interpreter didn’t seem to be saying anything. This played on his mind until after fifteen minutes he paused to see what was happening – and now the interpreter spoke, but he only said six words. He thought this was strange, but he picked up his notes and started again, he spoke for another fifteen minutes and then paused again. Once again the interpreter only uttered six words and the lecturer’s untrained ear, they sounded like the same six words he had heard before. All this happened again, so after forty-five minutes and the same few words from the interpreter the lecturer finally lost it and challenged him: “ look I’ve been delivering this lecture now for forty-five minutes and yet you’ve only spoken three times and each time you’ve said the same six words – what is it you have been saying to these people?” The interpreter looked a bit sheepish and then said quite simply, “ I tell the people – this man has said nothing new!”

So there is the challenge for me this evening – to say something new about vision and new about unity – when we think that we may have heard it all before. Of course, if what I have to say is based on the Gospel, then much of it should have a familiar ring but that doesn’t matter because the Gospel may be a familiar truth to many of us – but it cries out to be communicated in new and exciting ways. Perhaps that idea itself is part of the vision.

In the opening lecture in this series, we were told that our vision should be big, it should be ambitious, it should be almost unachievable – we should not set our sights too low. Our vision for unity can certainly be all of those things, but I would like to suggest that it also needs to be realistic for our time and place. In fact, we almost need two visions to hold on to. The grand over-arching vision encapsulated in the priestly prayer of Christ himself:

Father, may they be one in us
As you are in me and I am in you
So that the world may believe it was you who sent me.
I have given them the glory you gave to me,
That they may be one as we are one
With me in them and you in me
May they be so completely one
That the world will realise that it was you who sent me
Jn 17:21-23

We need to hold on to that, realising that it can and must only come about in God’s time. This is the kind of vision that has been likened to the way sailors used to navigate by the stars. They could gaze up into the heavens, knowing that they would never reach the stars, but holding on to that galactic vision could guide them home safely. We need to keep following that vision for which Christ prayed and indeed is still praying, but within that, I believe that we also need a more realistic and achievable vision as a step on the way. A vision which recognises God’s grace working in and through his people in this time and place. This vision should not be so grandiose that we give up on our human part in it – simply leaving it up to God – if God wants it he can do it! It should not be so trivial that we forget how God can surprise us – even if it means leading us where we think we would rather not go. It should be the sort of vision that will only materialise if we work as though it all depends on us but pray about it, knowing that it all depends on God.

Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.

Glory be to him whose power working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen. Eph. 3:15-21

Our Christian history is punctuated by heroic stories of men and women of vision. Often their initial idea or vision for building the Kingdom has been quite modest; it was not them who had grandiose ideas for what they had started, but God had other plans.

Perhaps we can draw some inspiration briefly from three such characters, one ancient and two modern. The three I have chosen are ; Francis of Assisi, George MacLeod and Roger Schultz.

Francis had a life-changing experience when he met a leper on the road and he realised that in meeting this man he was encountering Christ. It is also believed that Francis quite literally, had a vision. As he gazed up at the figure of Christ hanging on the crucifix in the ramshackle and dilapidated chapel of San Damiano, the Christ figure spoke these words to him: “ Francis, go and rebuild my church, which, as you can see, is falling into ruin.” With no ambition to do anything more than take the Lord at his word, Francis set about re-building that very chapel with his own bare hands. Gradually, the depth of the meaning of those words sank into his consciousness. That particular building did indeed need renovation – you can still see such hovels in Umbria these days – “in need of some restoration” the sign says – just waiting for the next unsuspecting Brit to come along with a fistful of euros! The deeper allegorical meaning which Francis took to heart was the call for renewal and a return to simple Gospel values within the church. Francis did not set out to form a movement or a religious order or even to found a monastery – but the rest followed, because the simplicity of the vision was contagious

Francis still inspires millions today with his particular and highly authentic interpretation of what it is to be a Christian. Have you noticed that when someone is transparently and authentically living the Gospel, then they carry with them an authority, which nobody would want to question.

My former bishop, very soon to be a retired cardinal (whatever that means!) once told me how he had been approached by a very eager young man in an affluent parish who said to him “Bishop, what the Church needs now is a new Franciscan revolution” the bishop turned to him and said “ I couldn’t agree more – you start it!” I want to say that he went away sad because he was a man of great wealth, but I don’t know that to be the case – however, that was many years ago and I’ve still not met the revolution!

George MacLeod had a different kind of vision, born of his experience in pre-war Glasgow in the tight hold of depression. He has been described as a minister, visionary and a prophetic witness for peace. In 1938, from the dockland parish of Govan in the West of Glasgow, he took unemployed skilled craftsmen and young trainee clergy to the ancient island of Iona, just off the South West tip of Mull. Like Francis, centuries before, they also went to restore a church as they set about rebuilding the medieval abbey stone by stone. They were also restoring something more important; their own self-esteem, their sense of community and hope in the future. As they re-built the structure of the abbey, these sons of the reformation re-discovered the value of a monastic kind of rule of life. The balance between prayer, work and the sharing of skills and a common life shaped that experience and those ideals continue to underpin the practice and principles of the Iona Community.

These days the Iona Community flourishes far beyond the original vision of George MacLeod, courageous though that was. The Community is totally ecumenical and is now dispersed nationally and internationally, while retaining a permanent presence on the island. Members share a common rule, which includes daily prayer and Bible reading; mutual sharing and accountability for the use of time and money and action and reflection for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Many of you will be familiar with the worship resources, which are produced by the Community and used widely in churches of different traditions.

Most of us will have heard of Taize, not least because of it’s distinctive style of worship, which again, happily transcends denominations and traditions. The brothers of Taize prefer not to be called a “movement”, but the community are far more than the inhabitants of a monastery atop a hill in Burgundy.

The beginnings were very simple; one man’s vision, which soon caught on as a model of authentic Christianity. In 1940 Bro. Roger left his native Switzerland to live in France, while convalescing from tuberculosis the call to create a community became overwhelming for him. He acquired a small property in Taize and began welcoming refugees from war-torn France, many of them Jews. By the autumn of 1942 the authorities had found out his activities and so Roger hastily returned to Geneva where he stayed until it was safe to go back to Taize in 1944, it was then that he began a common life with his first brothers. By 1949 there were seven brothers who committed themselves to a life of prayer, simplicity and celibacy. Bro. Roger wrote: Since my youth, I think that I have never lost the intuition that community life could be a sign that God is love, and love alone. Gradually the conviction took shape in me that it was essential to create a community with men determined to give their whole life and who would always try to understand one another and to be reconciled, a community where kindness of heart and simplicity would be at the centre of everything”

These days the community numbers around a hundred brothers who are drawn from both Protestant and Catholic traditions. There are cell groups in some of the most deprived and needy parts of the world and the welcome given to hundreds of thousands of young (and not so young!) pilgrims every year is legendary. This is what Pope John Paul II referred to as “that little springtime”. An ecumenical oasis where the baggage of history and the pain of theological division need not apply. Again, one person’s vision was taken over by the Holy Spirit and magnified. In each case, the founder had a small but distinctive vision, which grew beyond mere human imagining. As has been stated before; a vision needs to be contagious. The three examples I have given could be said to represent the Gamaliel Principle:
“ If this enterprise, this movement of theirs, is of human origin it will break up of its own accord; but if it does in fact come from God you will not only be unable to destroy them, but you might find yourselves fighting against God”.

We should not be ashamed of a relatively small vision – provided that we are always open to and guided by, the big one. So what can be our vision for living out the Gospel in Chichester and the surrounding villages? I would suggest that we don’t need a vision for CtiC; we don’t need a vision for the churches in Chichester, we don’t need a vision for Christians Together. We need a vision for the Kingdom! Only seeing the world (or just the city) through Gospel lenses will help us to see the working out of the Kingdom in all of this. The time has come to look beyond structures and acronyms and labels and petty power struggles – there’s enough of all of those in each of our individual churches! We need to start by asking ourselves “ how are those of us who claim to be united by the Gospel, going to live the gospel in a way that transforms?” (As if there were any other way of living the Gospel!) . I think it was G K Chesterton who once said that the problem with Christianity was not that it had been tried and found wanting – but that it had never really been tried! Transformation is a bit scary though, because it means that we may have to change!

If we hold on to the principle of the big vision, as expressed by Christ himself, during his High Priestly prayer, then we can also look at something which is provisional but appropriate for our stage on the journey in this time and place. I would suggest that there are three ideas, which we might look at as “tools” to enable us to engage in this process. They are; the New Testament concept of koinonia; and two aspects of Ecumenism which are gaining credence these days; spiritual ecumenism and receptive ecumenism.

For those of you not familiar with the term “koinonia”, I will try not to be a “koinonia bore” because it became something of leitmotif for several of the bi-lateral and multi-lateral inter-church dialogues of the 1980s and 90s. Most notably the Anglican Roman Catholic International Dialogue and the work of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. Like other words from New Testament Greek an accurate translation into English has been problematical, as it seems to express a reality and an aspiration, which no single English word can adequately capture. Thus, for example, the phrase “the koinonia of the Holy Spirit” found in 2 Cor 13:14 is translated in four different ways in four different English bibles: “fellowship”; “participation in”; “communion” and “sharing in”. It is probably rendered most often as “fellowship” or “communion”, but neither of those terms really do justice to the depth of this idea which has come to dominate a certain kind of ecumenical thought.

The koinonia experienced and expressed in the early Apostolic writings was not something static, but more of a process or a movement. One can also speak of “horizontal” and “vertical” koinonia – in other words; the relationship we have with the Triune God and the relationship we have with our fellow Christians and indeed with the whole of humanity. I think we need to hold on to that idea of “relationship”, because this is where this concept finds common ground with the other two “ecumenisms” I mentioned earlier. To think of koinonia as a process or a movement means that we can begin to talk about “degrees” of unity or communion. Unity by stages or steps is not a new idea as some of you may be familiar with the so-called “c”scale:
Conflict – competition – co-existence – cooperation – commitment – communion

Koinonia hovers around the commitment and communion stages.

In the work of the World Council of Churches there was wide agreement that koinonia has the following constituent elements, they might serve as a useful test or check list for our work with the churches of Chichester, so here goes:

• It is being rooted in faith which is complete trust in the Triune God
• It is receiving and sharing apostolic teaching, communion in prayer and breaking of bread
• Authentic discipleship partaking in the sufferings of Christ
• A sense of justice and compassion, sharing in each other’s joys, sorrows and sufferings
• The courage to struggle for truth at the expense of peaceful unanimity
• Serving one another in love and mutual receiving and giving of material and spiritual gifts
• The preaching of the Gospel to the whole of humanity
• Care for the harmony of creation
• An eschatological looking forward to the ultimate koinonia with Christ

At this point I would like to say a little about the notions of spiritual and receptive ecumenism before returning to koinonia as a possible link between the two and therefore a pointer for our vision for the future.

The very phrase “spiritual ecumenism” may seem like a statement of the obvious as it is hard to think of ecumenism without spirituality and any spirituality which is not ecumenical, one might deem to be suspect. However, sometimes we ignore or take the obvious for granted in ways, which do not serve the Kingdom. I do not want to dwell on the struggles or chequered history of CtiC in this lecture (a history which I have to a greater or lesser extent been part of for the last eight years), however, I would like to say that where we find ourselves on the ecumenical landscape is not an unusual place, nor is it necessarily anything to be ashamed off! The fact that ecumenical activity may have “plateaued” for a while can in itself be an indicator of how far we have come. On a long journey, or should I say, pilgrimage, it is never a bad idea to stop and take stock and review both the direction we need to take and the speed which will be realistic. I think it is true to say, that our experience in Chichester is mirrored both nationally and internationally. The “heady days” of the last decades of the twentieth century are over. Apparently rapid progress has been met with theological sticking points and organisational nightmares. The movement towards “spiritual ecumenism” now is an attempt to say: “lets celebrate what we’ve got, let’s enjoy the partial communion that we share, even though we know it’s not enough and in God’s time, lets pray ourselves into greater and more visible unity. It involves a different mindset from simply maintaining the ecumenical agenda we have become familiar with or being constantly frustrated that our structures do not seem to work. Jesus did not come to set up structures, but to form relationships.

From my own Tradition, the Decree on Christian Unity of the Second Vatican Council had this to say:
This change of heart and holiness of life, along with public and private prayer for the unity of Christians, should be regarded as the soul of the whole ecumenical movement and merits the name “spiritual ecumenism”.

In other words, prayer for Christian unity is an essential part of our ecumenical endeavour. In particular, it should be said that it is only through prayer and conversion that the obstacles to full visible unity, which seem insurmountable at present, will be overcome. Of course, prayer for unity is something which all of our congregations and communities can get on with – even if individual members never actually go to an ecumenical service or visit another church. Indeed it is true to say that this is happening already where different communities share intercessions for each other on a regular basis. So perhaps we could name and celebrate other examples of where prayer for and with different traditions is happening.

We should not forget the domestic church where different experiences of Christianity are shared within the same family. Inter-church families are living examples of koinonia at its deepest level and many of our churches benefit from the shared gifts and insights which these couples and families bring to us. The “Prayer for the City” group has been quietly working away for several years now, creating opportunities for Christians from different backgrounds to pray together. There are other more informal links between small groupings of churches and particularly in the surrounding villages there are good examples of spiritual ecumenism becoming visible. Although we should name and celebrate what is good, it should be said that spiritual ecumenism is not a way of papering over the cracks nor should it encourage a kind of irenic complacency – that says we’ve come far enough. In his own handbook on spiritual ecumenism, Cardinal Walter Kaspar makes this comment on the Lord’s Prayer:
Division among Christians does not hallow the name of God, it does not hasten the coming of God’s Kingdom, nor does it fulfil his will.
Spiritual Ecumenism is part of the vision, but not all of it.

Receptive ecumenism essentially does what it says on the tin! There has long been a recognition that ecumenism has to involve, not only the healing of divisions, but also the sharing of gifts. So far, the emphasis has often been on what we can give to each other, rather than what we can receive or learn from each other. To quote from the report of a recent conference at the University of Durham:
“ The essential principal behind receptive ecumenism is that the primary ecumenical responsibility is not to ask “ what do the other traditions first need to learn from us?” but “what do we need to learn from them?”. The assumption is that if all were asking this question seriously and acting upon it then all would be moving in ways that would both deepen our authentic respective identities and draw us into more intimate relationship.”

Interestingly, that word “relationship” crops up again! If we were to take on board those principles, there are some very pertinent questions we could be asking ourselves at a local level. Catholics might ask of the free evangelical churches: “what can we learn from your vibrancy and youth outreach? Anglicans might ask of Christchurch: “What can we learn from your experience of being a uniting church and a single congregation LEP?” The wave of new churches might want to ask the Catholics and Anglicans: “What can we learn from your sense of history and ecclesiology?” Pentecostals might want to ask Catholics about the value of ritual and devotional exercises. We all might want to ask each other about what has led us to be where and who we are! This kind of shift of emphasis could in fact lead us into a more profound experience of koinonia.

If we refer back to those features of koinonia as defined by the World Council of Churches we might come to a sense of building a vision through a shared relationship, using the spiritual and receptive elements as our tools. This is not a “tick box” exercise, but a search for a convergence of ideas from which a vision might emerge.

Our starting point is our faith in the Triune God and our yearning to share at the Eucharistic table. Even at a local level we need to understand the barriers that exist and to empathise with those churches which are bound by disciplines and practices that can only be changed at a more global level. Painfully we also need recognise that there is not always a common mind on what we mean by our shared baptism. There is no harm in re-visiting some of the basic beliefs which underpin the unity we already share. We need to be able to pray about these issues together and to “receive” each other’s insights.

A sense of compassion and a sharing in each other’s joys and sorrows can only grow within a deepening relationship, which, while respecting differences with a healthy impatience, engenders a real solidarity with the other, in love and discipleship. These relationships do exist at different levels already, but I would like to suggest that the relationship between the ministers and church leaders is a key factor here. Although at a personal level these relationships are often convivial, they remain largely invisible and therefore irrelevant to most church members.

The courage to struggle for truth at the expense of a peaceful unanimity is one of the most challenging and costly features of koinonia. Nevertheless, it is one which we cannot escape from at any level of ecumenism. To grow in relationship we must be able to do some theology together – rather than just talk about each other’s. The Vatican 11 Decree on ecumenism famously states that there is nothing so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism than a false irenicism – in other words, peace and harmony at any cost – or rather the cost of truth.

This koinonia check list also covers the giving and receiving of gifts which we have looked at and the imperative to preach the Gospel, which must surely be our shared motivation for anything that we do together. Christ is still praying his prayer….that they may all be one so that the world may believe. I think that the ecumenical vision is diminished when we start to believe that a fragmented church can witness to the Gospel more effectively than a unified one. It is only our shared call to evangelise that will inject a greater sense of urgency into our vision – otherwise we will simply think that we are doing it for ourselves.

I hope that I have begun to articulate a sense of vision which is based on relationships rather than structures; learning and receiving rather than giving and teaching; and a degree of shared common life which can be seen as a step on the way to the final vision in the fulfilment of the prayer of Christ. We should not be dispirited if we have to start out relatively modestly. St Francis, George MacLeod and Roger Schultz could never have seen where their first tentative steps were going to lead – but they hadn’t reckoned on the Holy Spirit pinching their ideas and making them her own! Although we may have to start small, I wouldn’t rule out the occasional grand gesture. I still stand by the words I said in the Cathedral on Good Friday last year. That one Good Friday, all the Christians in Chichester will commemorate the Lord’s Passion together and for that day, all our individual churches will be closed. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, if the only problem with that idea were to find a venue big enough!

I haven’t given a complete road map or blueprint, because I don’t think that is necessarily how vision works. So we do need to keep our minds open to the Spirit. It might mean smaller partnerships of churches defined by location, shared outreach or a particular mission focus. I think that we will need to break down and break into the unintentional but real divide between the traditional churches – both catholic and reformed – and the increasing number of new ecclesial communities. We need to seek a common language for those who profess a common faith but do not share a common history or experience of being church. Only through real communication with each other will we approach any degree of communion. Once again, we need to build our sense of koinonia based on a deepening relationships, which are both vertical and horizontal.

It may be no coincidence that some of my material has been drawn from the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, which was held at Santiago de Compostela in 1993. Santiago is traditionally the burial place of the remains of St James and has been a pilgrimage destination for centuries. The “Camino” to Santiago is a well-trodden path which has branches that originate in various parts of Europe, converging on a route which takes you all across the north of Spain. Last November I joined a few friends from my parish to walk the first section of the “camino” from the Pyrenees into the heart of the Basque Country. We only did about five days walking , a modest start for the total journey which is about ten times that far.
 

None of us had the luxury of being able to take six weeks off work at one time, so the idea is that we go back, year on year, to do a bit more. The final pilgrimage destination, Santiago will still be there, its not going to move. Hopefully, one day we will complete the journey, even with major interruptions over several years! Each year we will know that we have more kilometres in the bank! Perhaps that is not unlike the ecumenical pilgrimage we are all on. We can see the vision; we know the destination is there and its not going to shift, we simply have to keep coming back to it, even when life gets in the way and it feels like we are starting again. There is no going back on the progress we have made so far.

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