Third Sunday of Epiphany by Fr Jack

Isaiah 9.1-4

1 Corinthians 1.10-18

St Matthew 4.12-23

Today marks the end of the the annual  Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Something that we take very seriously here at St Giles. We live into Christian unity with our siblings at Jewin Welsh Presbyterian Church, Wesley‘s Chapel and Leysian Methodist Mission and the local Roman Catholic Parish: St Joseph’s Bunhill Row and St Mary Moorfields .

So I want to reflect as I begin on the nature and challenge of Christian unity.

Jesus prayed in St John’s gospel that we may all be one as He and the Father are one. That we may be one because that is simply the truth of who we truly are, as it is of Jesus and the Father. But also we may all be one, so that the whole world might believe. (St John 17.21 etc)

The wounds of division in the Church are very real. These divisions are lies in the face of who we truly are, and they also present a stumbling block to those we are trying to reach.

These wounds are the sin of mistrust, of broken fellowship, of broken communion, of structural disunity, of sectarian violence.

And yet there is good news. Recent decades have brought huge steps forward, as well as a few inevitable backward steps, in Christian unity.

And here at St Giles’ we can’t sort the high-level institutional unity that is way above our pay grade; although we do pray for that. Instead we, here, get on and LIVE unity. We share autumn and Lent each year with Wesley’s, Jewin, St Joseph’s and St Mary’s. We step into this truth of who God is and who we are, and wait for everyone else to catch up, as we worship, pray, learn and eat cake together.

Please be a part of this unity. It isn’t just a nicety. Is is a core mission of the Church in our time, and St Giles’ has a very special mission, given our ecumenical fellowship; which is closer and more real than any I have ever known elsewhere. It is a distinctive gift of this parish and it is very precious.

Having established that, let’s step back and look at unity as Christians.

Because it isn’t brand unity, like corporations onboarding new staff and teaching them to use the language and systems and ways of the company to standardise client and staff expectations.

And it isn’t whipped unity, like a political party trying to make sure that there isn’t dissension or factions, or chaotic campaigning and PR.

No this unity is Christian, and that means it is Trinitarian; it is God shaped. Jesus prays that we may be one ‘As [He] and the Father are one’, and as they are one with the Holy Spirit too, of course. This, then, is a unity in diversity.

Not compliance, brand, or training, but the mysterious eternal dance of love at the heart of the universe. The three persons of the Trinity not cajoling or strategising themselves into one, but each giving and receiving in complete mutuality of love. One to all, and all in one great unity of given-ness. It’s technically called perichoresis (the Greek for rotation or dancing around). The Godhead, the perfect and eternal unity, achieved through perfect gift, perfect love.

This recalibrates us when we think about the unity of the Church, and warns us off the million lesser ways we might talk or think about unity.

The Church, the Body of Christ, can never be big corporate or a political party, we look to the Godhead for who we are, not Google or The Greens.

And this has countless ramifications. Unity properly understood is not about loss of distinctiveness, it is about the unity that can only be through grace, gift and love. And luckily those things don’t start or end with us.

So in that sense we already have unity! Thanks be to God. We are one in God, even if we are not one down here, and nothing can take that away.

It’s also worth bearing in mind the reality of the Body of Christ, as the Church is. This Body, which we feast on in the Eucharist, and which we (the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church) are (as we’ll say in the creed) … this Body of Christ that we are by virtue of our baptism, and because we are what we eat. This Body, us, is the wounded body, the broken and beaten and bloodied body of the Crucified. The wounds of division in the Church are Christ’s wounds.

This both convicts us for causing these wounds of division, and also holds us in our wounded-ness.

Because our theology of church is not an idealised fantasy world. The church is a messy place to be - here in the parish, the national church, the global Anglican Communion of churches, and the Universal Church. It is maddening, petty, annoying and messy.

Twas ever thus.

Christ calls His first disciples in the Gospel given for today. It’s a beautiful moment. And that is true. But just as true is that these apostles will spend the next three years arguing. Who is the greatest? Disagreeing. Completely failing to trust one another or understand what Jesus is up to. That too is the church (here in these pews, and worldwide), and always has been.

Just as St Paul is contending with in today’s epistle. The squabbling in the church in Corinth. Factions and fall outs. Resentments and pettiness. Church life.

And yet, knowing all this, Jesus calls these people, and continues to call you and me and Christians everywhere into the Church: baptized into His Body, and being what we eat, eating what we are, His Body.

Life as the Church is as bonkers as always, and as full of grace, as always too.

(It strikes me again and again that it is in the pettiness and madness of life with others (not the shiny and high functioning stuff) - there in the nonsense - that we are being invited to rejoice in the presence of Christ. It is perverse, but it is also true).

But that dark humour of grace in the nonsense is not our only comfort.

The vision of hope Isaiah gives us today and that Jesus quotes in the Gospel is also real. It is a promise of the now and not yet if God’s Kingdom.

Now, we have unity in Christ. Not yet: we are striving and living into it.

Now we have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection. Not yet: we will face death and trust in the resurrection promise.

Now, we eat the Bread of Heaven, the Body of Christ. Not yet: we will come to the fullness of that banquet and the glorious company of the saints.

Now, the world, the universe is already Christ’s. Not yet: we live and love (even in our pettiness) towards the peace and justice of God’s Kingdom.

Always, now and not yet.

So, we close this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in hope. Not consigning Christian unity,  with the Christmas decorations, into storage for another year, no. But as the banner we will march under for the next 51 weeks. Living into unity in worship, in prayer, in love and service. What is, and what will be, for each of us and all of us, in God’s hands. Which is the only place to be. Thanks be to God.