Epiphany 2, 18th January 2009
First of two homilies on the ecumenical movement and interfaith dialogue
The Very Revd Michael J. Pitts, Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal
1 Samuel 3:1-10
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51
Our Bible readings, in these weeks of the post-Epiphany season, reflect on the nature of the person and mission of the Messiah whose birth we have celebrated through Christmas and Epiphany. In this time we think about the stories of the beginning of his ministry and today we focus on the choice of those who would be his close companions for the next three years. Remember, as always, we are dealing here with stories exploring meaning rather that history relating facts. More recently this coming week, book ended by its two Sundays, has been denoted as a time for prayer for Christian unity.
In John's Gospel the close companions of Jesus are referred to as the disciples. In this morning's gospel we read of the call of two of them, Philip and Nathaniel. Prior to this, in the story, we have heard of Andrew and Simon Peter (whom John alone identifies with Cephas). Later on in the gospel we shall read of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, Thomas, called the twin, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple, five referred to individually, but without names, including the sons of Zebedee, and the beloved disciple. Thus John, like Paul, knew the tradition of there being twelve, but it does not seem as important to either of them as it does to the synoptic gospellers. The word for disciple, in our Christian Scriptures, refers to a group of those learning the masters teaching, as it does in the case of other ancient philosophers. When John speaks of "the disciples", they are clearly a wider group than the twelve, but they are all learners. With the exception of Joseph of Arimathea, they are unlike the other named and unnamed companions of Jesus in John's writing, in that they follow Jesus around the countryside. Others, like Nicodemus, Lazarus, Martha and Mary have homes in which they live. Elsewhere in the Christian Scriptures "disciples" refers to followers of Jesus teaching, whether during the three years ministry or after the resurrection in the early church.
Paul and the Synoptic gospels often use the word disciple, but they have another word, not used at all by John. This is the word Apostle. In the synoptic Gospels Apostle refers very specifically to the twelve, and that, you remember, is so important to Luke that after the suicide of Judas Iscariot, he has to be replaced by Matthias to make up the number of the twelve. There is however no replacement of others who die later in Luke's story. Paul begs to differ about the identification of apostleship with the twelve. He claims, clearly against opposition, the he too is an apostle, and uses the term for several others outside the twelve, some of whom he likes, and others whom he does not. So it looks as though apostleship is very much about a power struggle in the early church, an observation born out by reading Luke's history, The acts of the Apostles, alongside the genuine letters of Paul. Jumping forward two centuries or so, in the creed of Nicea, composed in the heat of the Arian controversy, the church is described as the holy, catholic and apostolic church. The phrase does not occur in the statement of faith we know as the Apostles' Creed, nor in its 2nd century forerunner, the Old Roman Creed. It looks as though the tradition of the apostles and their importance for the faith brought out and polished whenever there is conflict in the church. That is not totally untrue of our situation today.
As we have seen the word disciple means learner. The Greek word Apostle refers to one who is sent. In the Latin texts the word is transliterated when it refers to the apostles, but if we translate it we get the word which stands behind our English word mission. Unlike in John, in the Synoptic gospels the Apostles are sent out on missions of preaching healing and exorcism. So when, in our Nicene Creed, we confess our belief in the one holy, catholic and apostolic church, are we speaking about a church which is based on the witness of the first apostles, or are we speaking of a church which is sent out on a mission?
Whatever may have been believed at the time in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Anglicans and Protestants alike firmly put the emphasis on mission. Following the merchants, civil servants and soldiers of the great empires, and sometimes leading them, went the missionaries, bringing, they believed, not only the one true religion, but also a superior civilization.
As this great expansion of Christendom around the world was taking place, the missionaries found a problem. The churches were so divided amongst themselves, who could possibly know what the one truth really was? At first the problem was mollified by a policy called comity, in which the missioners (mostly working for independent societies rather than churches) carved up the mission field into segments, and as far as possible refrained from plowing each others fields. But the underlying problem remained in their conscience, and led to the first international missionary conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910. This is usually considered the birthplace of the modern ecumenical movement. I say modern because various attempts at healing division in the church had happened through the ages, including a sixteenth century initiative by my college, which invited a group of Orthodox theological students from Athens to study in Oxford. The initiative failed, not through theological problems, but because the Greek scholars could not cope with the English weather and found the food inedible.
The dynamic started by the 1910 conference led, after the Second World war, to the founding of the World Council of Churches, the Protestant, Anglican and now Orthodox body which sponsors this week of Prayer for Christian Unity. From the beginning, the major themes of the work of this body have been the healing of doctrinal and structural division between the churches, and promoting effectiveness in Mission. It is with the second of these themes that I have been concerned in most of my ministry, beginning with a semester of graduate studies in Bossey, a school run jointly by the World Council of Churches and the University of Geneva. The Graduate school of 1968 - 69, in which I took part, was centered round the theme of Mission. We looked at separating, in our thinking, both mission from evangelism, and mission from colonialism. We saw that mission was not really the work of individuals or of independent societies, but the vocation of the whole church. To be the church is to participate in God's mission to the world. This mission is not one of converting everybody to one true religion, even less of convincing the world of the superiority of one kind of civilization. It is about bringing compassion, peace, social justice and equity into a torn and divided world. We saw that, in the Bible, salvation is as much about being whole people in a whole world as is about securing a place in heaven.
These views are, you will understand, are based in a historical critical understanding of the Bible, which explains why fundamentalists and right wing evangelicals have never had much brief for the World Council of Churches. In the seventies and eighties they gave it a very bad reputation especially in the United States, where it was widely portrayed as a communist inspired organization. But the understanding of mission which I have described and the carrying out of that mission in cooperation with other churches is a belief which has inspired most of my ministry.
For five years in France, and then later for three years here in Montreal, I worked with an organization now known as The Mission to Seafarers. In both places I worked in close cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church in a mission which was very much a mission of justice and compassion. Whether providing seafarers with a home from home and a place to make telephone calls to family and friends far away, or whether working in cooperation with unions to ensure that seafarers were paid just wages and worked in adequate and safe conditions, we were, I believe involved in the Mission of God. In between these two periods, I worked in a ministry in the old Soviet Union, Mongolia and Finland, and later in Sweden. Again this ministry was very much an ecumenical ministry shared with Roman Catholics, and even more with the protestant churches. There was less of the direct work of practical compassion, though I did use my status as diplomat to take fresh fish to Moscow and tomatoes and Stilton cheese to Ulan Bator. But the centre of the work was to provide for those cared for it, a theological under girding for the work of international diplomats, students journalists and business people in working for justice and peace in the world, in which many of them, in those days, really believed.
Here in Christ Church Cathedral, I have been involved in a rather different kind of ecumenism. I have been involved in other churches, especially in the creation of the Quebec Religious Heritage Foundation, which has enabled so much restoration of the built heritage of religious groups over the past decade. But over the years of my ministry both here and previously, I have become very disappointed at the unwillingness of church structures to make changes which might lead to greater unity. Not only are we, I believe, further from unity that we were fifty years ago: we are also more deeply divided across the progressive-conservative chasm then we are across the divisions between the mainline churches. For these reasons we have developed here something rather different. We are clearly on the progressive side of that chasm, and we have drawn into our number people from many different church backgrounds. We are still an Anglican Cathedral, obedient to our Bishop, but we never ask people at the door about their religious persuasion. We are a different kind of ecumenical community, and those who worship with us include sometimes people of totally different faiths. Let's end this morning's homily with a little experiment I have never tried before. Just raise your hand if you were born into an Anglican family and baptized by the Anglican church without first being a member of a different church or religion.
Thank you. I hope to preach again next Sunday and take these thoughts in another direction.
