January 27, 2008

Clay Nelson

Epiphany 3     1 Corinthians 1:10-18     Matthew 4:12-23

Some words just shouldn’t be put together in the same sentence. We call them an oxymoron. All the same I get a kick out of them and so does anyone who enjoys irony. Some of my favourites are “military intelligence,” “compassionate conservative,” “civil servant,” and “religious tolerance.” This Sunday is dedicated to one of the best of all oxymorons, “Christian Unity.”

This year is the 100th anniversary of praying for Christian Unity. In 1908 an Anglican priest and nun in a Franciscan order in a small New York town set aside the 8 days between the feasts of St Peter and St Paul to pray for Christian Unity. Unfortunately for their movement they later converted to Catholicism and the Protestants were no longer interested.

However the Protestants got serious about Christian unity two years later in Edinburgh at a World Missionary Conference, which helped give birth to the YMCA and YWCA and the ecumenical movement was born.

Pope John XXIII gave it a major push at Vatican II. Protestants were no longer “schismatics” or “heretics” but “separated brethren.” I don’t know if that meant women Protestants were still heretics.

Now I may have already lost you, because the ecumenical movement generates about as much interest and excitement as Ekatahuna’s Annual TiddlyWinks Tournament. In a country where the majority of folk select “none of the above” as to religious preference, talking about Christian Unity is about as relevant as debating the virtues of different brands of toothpaste. Frankly, I know I couldn’t care less.

So why preach on the subject? Does someone have a gun to my head? No, it is because unity, Christian or otherwise, has become a hot topic again.

In political circles, the closely watched campaign for US president has put it front and centre. Obama is the child of a Pakeha mother and a Kenyan father whose name is an oxymoron for a US presidential candidate. His first name rhymes with Iraq, his middle name is Hussein and his last name unfortunately differs with that of the most wanted man on the planet by one consonant. This oxymoron has made unity the focus of his campaign.

He came to America’s attention at the 2004 Democratic Convention where he gave a “rouser” of a speech lamenting America’s polarisation as symbolised in states being consider either blue or red, liberal or conservative. After 25 years of being divided by Republican wedge issues and their policy of making people afraid so they could maintain power, his message was one many Americans were ready to hear. He is now running for president on the theme of hope and unity. It is too early to know if someone can win the office being positive, but that a mixed race oxymoron is in serious contention speaks volumes. Having a black president is an oxymoron I would like to see.

Unity is also a hot topic these days in the Anglican Communion, which some of us consider a pretty good oxymoron as well. A hundred years ago the issue of Christian Unity was mostly about bridging the Catholic-Protestant divide. It was a pretty big divide because it was not just about differing beliefs, but about ethnicity and race as well. A lot of this hostility has subsided over the years, but what remains is still rooted in prejudice.

These days Anglicans have come to ask why fight Catholics, when we can have more fun fighting each other? Even though we are a relatively small denomination the fight has become so fearsome, that even the popular media, whose lifeblood is following or even nurturing conflict, can’t resist the story. Maybe this should be Anglican Unity Sunday instead.

While on the surface this fracas seems to be about the Americans ordaining a gay man in a committed relationship, it really has several subtexts. One is gender. Conservative bishops helped elect Katharine Jefferts Schori primate not because they wanted her, but because they knew her election would push conservatives in the US and abroad to the brink who have never approved of ordaining women. Of the four US dioceses that have either left The Episcopal Church or are preparing to do so, none of them have ordained a woman in the 32 years it has been permissible.

Another subtext is post-colonialism. I remember a lunch 25 years ago with several fellow African seminarians, one of whom had just been elected a bishop back home. During the conversation they spoke with pride about the faithfulness of Christians in Africa, and the Bible believing purity of their faith. I remember one of them with 20/20 foresight saying he saw a day when Africans would come to the US as missionaries to spread the Gospel. So much of the conflict may sound like it is about what Scripture says about homosexuality, but it is really about patriarchy, power and control, and an emerging independent identity in the Third World.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has been helplessly and somewhat ineptly, in my opinion, trying to restore unity to the communion at the price of backing off of justice and inclusion for gay and lesbian peoples. For me this raises the question of what does unity look like in any context?

I would suggest that too often what is meant by unity is conformity. That is certainly the intention of the Draft Covenant being discussed throughout the Anglican Communion these days. It proposes that the Primates have the power to determine right belief and to punish those who do not conform. It is not surprising Kiwi Anglicans have a problem with this. This is not because a certain amount of conformity is required in nations, communities, churches, families and marriages for them to work at all. The reason we have laws and prisons is based on the need for a certain level of conformity. On that there is probably common agreement. But conformity does not logically bring about unity. As conformity is imposed by the most powerful, it actually works against unity. Humans being human naturally chaff at conformity unless they are the ones imposing it. The friends of conformity can be efficiency, order, and productivity, but they also can be tyranny as in the Third Reich, racism experienced as segregation in the American South and greed as seen in globalisation. The individual can become lost in conformity so eventually it is resisted, passively or aggressively.

Unity is something else indeed. It begins as an individual spiritual journey that looks honestly at our values, our beliefs; our attitudes, many of which maybe by-products of our need to conform. As we journey deeper within we confront those that divide us from being our true selves and from those around us. Unlike conformity, unity is not imposed; it is discovered. We learn that agreement is not required for our sense of oneness to thrive. It is not threatened by diversity and difference. The discovery of oneness bears the fruits of love, compassion and a desire for justice. It is not hard to find. It is everywhere – within, between and beyond us. Its source is that transcendent power we sometimes call God that Christians experience in the person of Jesus: A man who defined unity, but hardly conformity. Finding oneness with that power is our Christian hope – which fortunately is not an oxymoron.

Without this inner journey there is no balance to the conformity the world often requires, which is why the Archbishop’s route to unity will never get there. It is why Obama’s march to the White House will probably be stalled by the powers of darkness. It is why Christians will still be fighting with each other and those of other faiths for yet another millennium, no matter how often we pray for Christian Unity. We can only seek it.