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'May they all be one that the world may believe'

Address given by the Rt Rev Dr Idris Jones, Bishop of Glasgow & Galloway in the Scottish Episcopal Church, at GCT's Unity Week service in the Salvation Army Hall, Houldsworth St, Anderston, on Sunday 15 January, 2006

I am sure that some of us have had the experience of being admitted to a hospital ward. When it comes to the bit where you get asked "what religion?", friends tell me  this can be quite tricky.

If you give the correct answer, which is "Christian", you will  be looked at as if you are trying to be awkward.

Even worse,  if you answer  Episcopalian. "What’s that?"' is the usual response. Or sometimes: "Is that Catholic or Protestant".

If you then try to pursue the quest for truth and say that it's neither (or both, since Episcopalians see themselves as both – that is, sometimes as protestant Catholics and sometimes as Catholic protestants) the atmosphere can become quite chill. And trying to sum up five hundred years of history in short order in the middle of a busy hospital ward will not endear you to anyone. Nor should it!

A great friend of mine often used to ask me: "When the folk in our town read the newspaper and see all these different denominations advertise for Sunday, what effect do you think this has on them?" I never gave an answer to that, but his view was that it could only encourage confusion and determination not to get involved in any of them.

The fact is that it must be the will of God that God’s people, however they seek to offer worship, or be disciples of Jesus, are meant to do it  together. Frankly,  it would help the Health Service if all of us who in the past had set up our own  ecclesial bodies thought seriously about how we could get back to the church from which we had declined.

So we would all return to a Catholic Church ... but then the Catholic Church of the West would re-unite with the Orthodox churches of the East so that when asked what religion we were, we could with truth and conviction say 'Christian', and that would be the complete and only answer to give .

For myself I want to do two things: accept that such a development would be a miracle and is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future, but also hold on to the vision that it is something to be prayed for and yearned for as a proper expression of the Kingdom of God; since our Lord Jesus prayed: "May they all be one that the world may believe."

Meanwhile we are where we are – and we have to do what we can. Actually that’s quite a lot, and we should celebrate those areas in which there is  a covenant sharing between churches and a commitment to work together in the service of Christ and of the world. 

Bishop Tom Wright, commenting on Matthew 18, from which our reading comes at this service, suggests that we should have in mind what lies behind the teaching of our Lord. That is an assumption that Christians live and behave in a distinctive way. At its deepest and most significant this means putting into practice in our lives the commitment to forgiveness. There is no suggestion that this is easy or quick; but there is the clear understanding that it is what those who seek to follow Jesus must do and will want to do.

Forgiveness, says Bishop Wright, is like the air in your lungs. There’s only room for the next lung-full when you’ve just breathed out the previous one.  Forgiveness is not the easy paper over the cracks option pretending that 'it doesn’t matter' or 'I know you didn’t mean it' or whatever. Forgiveness is when you recognise that it did happen, it was meant and it does matter, and that you are going to deal with it and end up loving and accepting one another again anyway. But it begins with a recognition or acceptance that a situation exists and it needs prayer and humility and courage to get right.

It sounds like hard work, and it is. But whatever we do - whether in terms of trying to work closer together in Christian fellowship, or in reaching out to the hurt and the needy in our community around us, or supporting others in different parts of God’s world - this passage ends with a dramatic promise.

We are not left on our own as we struggle to live out the kingdom of God and to become the sort of families or communities or churches that Jesus wants. God’s presence is with us, and our actions here on earth have an extra and eternal dimension. When we pray together God is with us and where two or three gather in his name, Jesus is in the midst.

The Lord is here – his spirit is with us: that’s encouraging and it's challenging as well. But what does out Lord make of us if we give up trying to be more accepting of each other.

He might ask us: "Are you quite sure that it's me you want to be in your midst?"