Forward in Unity

Forward in Faith ^ | 7/7/2004 | The Right Revd Ray Sutton, Suffragan Bishop in the Midwest Diocese, Reformed Episcopal Church

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My fellow Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Laity and other distinguished guests at this annual Forward in Faith North America gathering, greetings in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ! Coming to the subject of unity, I’m reminded of the challenges before us by the story of a man stranded on a South Pacific island. He was finally discovered when an oil freighter passed by the area noticing smoke from his fire. The ship dropped anchor. The curious captain of the ship came ashore. He noticed three huts on the beach. He asked the survivor what they were for. The man explained that the first hut was his home. The second was his church. The captain interrupted with a question, “But what is the third hut for?” The man smiled and smugly clarified, “Oh that’s the church I attend when I can’t get along in the first one.” It’s kind of like the memorable little poem: To dwell above with saints we love/O that will sure be glory/But to dwell below with saints we know/Well, that’s another story!

Yes, I suppose we know each other all too well by this point in history, evangelical, catholic and charismatic. Maybe we’re like the couple that’s been together so long they realize it’s okay finally to get married. They understand their differences, accept them and find that their love and what they share in common transcends the rest. Their knowledge of the good and the bad and their previous disagreements and resolutions provide for a great strength to work together. The monumental Oxford scholar and Anglo Catholic, Edward Pusey, speaks with similar concern in his classic work, Eirenicon. You may remember that he wrote this work to John Keble after Manning and Newman had departed for the Roman Church. It is his apologetic for remaining in the Anglican Way. He writes of his own conviction and need for unity with the Evangelicals.

I have loved those who are called “Evangelicals.” I loved them, because they loved our Lord. I loved them, for their zeal for souls . . . I was often drawn to individuals among them more than to others who held truths in common with myself, which the Evangelicals did not hold, at least explicitly. I believe them to be “of the truth.” . . . I sought them out . . . I sought to point out to them our common basis of faith.” (p. 2)

With the desire and the spirit of Dr. Pusey’s kind and irenic words, we approach the topic of the day, “Forward in Unity.” We’ve come to the realization that we need to go forward. And the presumption is that we can’t do it unless we do it together. So to address the subject of unity I turn your attention to the only place in the New Testament where the word unity, as translated from the Greek text, is actually found. In fact, it occurs twice in this one location. The passage is the fourth chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.

The first reference simply reads in the third verse, “endeavoring to maintain unity in the bond of peace.” The second citation of the word unity in the Greek New Testament is found only a few verses later in verse 13. St. Paul speaks of growing “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” When we put these two references together we have the now and the not yet. “Unity is a reality already in existence but also a reality yet to be attained” (Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Vol. 5, p. 844). We are to keep what we have and grow into a greater unity that we do not have.

To comprehend the fourth chapter of Ephesians, however, it is important to place it in the flow of St. Paul’s thought in the epistle as a whole. Perhaps you’ve heard the old saying, “A text outside of a context can become a pretext.” The Book of Ephesians is essentially the application of the ramifications of the Ascension, the meaning of accessibility to and union and communion with Christ and the saints in heaven. The Te Deum calls it, “the opening of the kingdom of heaven to all believers.” The Book of Ephesians therefore explains the significance, the causes and the responsibilities attendant to participating in the kingdom of heaven while yet still in this life.

In the first chapter St. Paul begins with the significance of entering the heavenlies by stating forthrightly, “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (1:3). In fourteen references to our being in Him in the heavenlies, we are introduced to the truth that the Church on earth in some sense approaches the courts of heaven now. We ascend with and to Christ as He in some way comes to us. St. Paul’s prayer (1:16) at the opening of the book is to the end that the Church would come to a greater awareness of this fact, and actualize the abundance of the resources of the heavenly realm to which it has entry. The resources include the assisting availability of the all the saints (1:18), and most especially the access to Him who has “all rule and authority and power and dominion” (1:21), and beneath whom “He has put all things under His feet . . . for the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (1:22-23).

In the second section of the Epistle, the cause of being seated with Christ “in the heavenly places,” reiterated again in 2:6, is the Grace and gifting of God: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God – not because of work, lest any man should boast” (2:8-9). It was through the Cross (2:16) that the kingdom of heaven was made open to all, Jew and Gentile. This is the Gospel that calls for certain responsibilities, which brings us to the third section of the Epistle, chapters 3-6, the fourth chapter on unity falling in the midst of this section.

The third section of St. Paul’s Epistle has to do with the responsibilities accompanying heavenly access. They start in chapter three with the stewardship of spreading the musterion, the mysteries, the Sacramental Grace through the Church made available to all regardless of race and color (3:2), forming the mystical body of Christ’s Church militant, expectant and triumphant. Furthermore, the heavenly access to Christ obligates the Church militant to manifest the unity of heaven and to grow into what we shall become in the life of the world to come in Christ. This is the concern of our study today. St. Paul calls us to recognize and keep what we already have, the now. At the same time we are compelled by the Apostle to grow into a greater unity because we have been allowed to traffic in the holiness and the realm of the heavenlies. We are drawn together precisely because we have entered the outer courts of the next world by the Blessed Sacrament. This intersection of the two worlds is sometimes represented by a half-circular communion rail extending out toward the nave, which had its origin by the way in the Scandinavian countries. On the chancel side of this world is the sanctuary, what the Book of Hebrews calls “the cloud of witnesses” of the Church expectant (12:1-2), and the tabernacle of the Living Christ. Outside the rail, the nave, is the earth, the world of the Church militant. Every time we go to the Eucharist, this heavenly journey brings us face to face with the vaulted realities of the next world, one of which is unity and our responsibility to be unified. Some of the other realities follow chapter four in Ephesians, which deserve brief mention to complete the full context of this wonderful Epistle.

The remainder of the fourth, fifth and first part of the sixth chapters concern the moral and family responsibilities of those who have been admitted into God’s heavenly realm. Our lives are to reflect the kingdom of heaven. Laced by its vaulting fragrances, burned by the light of God’s Glory, and touched by His presence, we are to go forth into this life as living icons, refracting as images of the Most High God. It is absurd to argue that there are no core Christian doctrines affecting Biblical moral and family life. In short, the teaching of the Ascent into the heavenly presence of the Triune, Family of God requires behavior that reflects the God and His Bride of heaven. It is here that we meet the heart of the blasphemy of condoning homosexual behavior, especially in the Church, the kingdom of heaven. We gain a sense of why this behavior is so repugnant to the Almighty. We are to image in our societal and familial relations the Holy Family of Heaven. Very simply, God took a Bride, the Church. The Groom did not take unto Himself another groom, which is the image portrayed by homosexual union. It is the inversion of the Family of God and therefore Satanic. This is why the Epistles all spend so much time teaching how the Incarnation re-orders society and family according the creation image redeemed by the True Image of God, Jesus Christ.

St. Paul concludes his powerful epistle on the implications of the theology and the life required, by the Ascent of Christ and His Church into heaven, with the sixth chapter on spiritual warfare (6:10 ff.). This warfare is described as not against “flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness [and here’s that important Pauline phrase again in Ephesians] in the heavenly places” (6:12). To use the title of Charles Williams’ delightful book, the War in Heaven has begun. We are allowed to engage the principalities of the air by putting on the high priestly armor of Christ. God chooses to use humans to fight fallen angels, remarkable when you think about it, but of course we are assisted by the unfallen angels and archangels and the hosts of heaven in addition to the armor of Christ. This brings us back to our passage in the midst of this section on the responsibilities associated with the heavenly access of this life. Perhaps we can now appreciate even more the Pauline call for unity. How can we fight to win in spiritual warfare if we’re divided! It’s said of Lord Nelson at Trafalgar who, coming on deck and finding two British officers quarreling, whirled them about and – pointing to the ships of their adversary – exclaimed, “Gentlemen, there are your enemies!” It’s time for us to whirl about and get it straight who is the enemy. It’s not other Biblically orthodox Anglican Christians, not Anglo Catholics, the Evangelicals, not the Charismatics, nor any fellow Biblical Christian. It was as though Admiral Nelson was saying, “You can’t move forward if you’re not unified and focused on the real enemy.” Neither can we, as kindred, orthodox Anglican Christians. So let us return to the fourth chapter of Ephesians to the specific subject of unity.

First, St. Paul calls the Church to preserve the now-ness of the unity already possessed. He begins where we often do not, with what we have in common. Here is what St. Paul says we have in common and are to preserve: “There is one body and one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (4:4-5). We are one body, referring to the Body of Jesus Christ, the mystical union of all believers. But we are believers with common apostolic roots and heritage. The ontology of the Living, Body of Jesus Christ has been transferred through the faith and order of the laying on hands to the heads of bishops, priests and deacons. Then from the hands of bishops and priests this ontology of Jesus has been mystically communicated through the elements of Bread and Wine so that they become the Body and Blood of Christ to us. And as we participate in the real presence of Christ we are formed into what we already are and will become. We are in some powerfully wonderful sense already organically united to Christ and each other in what our prayer books call the Church of God. We are participants of the same Church that historically and eschatologically, and really and ultimately counts.

St. Paul next declares that we are one Spirit, which I take to be the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. He is the Lord and Giver of Life forming a common life, the true life of God in us. His ghostly presence enters us at Baptism, fills us at Confirmation, comes at the Epiclesis in the canon of our consecrations and invocations, and renews and refills us when receiving the Eucharist; St. Paul tells the Corinthians “we all drink of one Spirit,” the drink in the context of the 14th chapter of 1 Corinthians most assuredly referring to the Eucharist of the 11th chapter. We already have the Holy Spirit in Common. We share in Him and He in us. He enters us to be energized by Him. We receive the same spiritual gifts from Him to create the same offices of ministry and the same ministries. He is the same Spirit conveyed at our prayers of unction and healing. We have the same kinds of diseases healed by the same Holy Spirit. We are one in the Spirit as an old song says.

The following unity referred to by St. Paul is the “one hope of our calling.” Christ is our hope, our passion, our deepest longing. When I teach a course on spirituality, I like to ask students to tell me who are the best Christians in the history of the Church. Not who had the best theology but who offered the best prayers. I hear names such Augustine, Athanasius, Thomas Aquinas, Cranmer, Francis of Assisi, Luther, Calvin, Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Wesley, and so forth. Then I loved to select prayers of those saints without telling them which saint wrote what prayer. The students have to match the prayers with the correct saints. Ironically, they normally have a difficult time matching the prayers because the piety of the great saints shares so much in common. They pray to the same God. They repent of the same sins. They ask for the same things. They struggle with the same spiritual realities in their lives. Their prayers are quite similar in so many ways. No doubt the contours of how their understanding of dogmatics followed very different lines. Their prayers did not. Why? They had the same hope in Jesus Christ.

St. Paul speaks further of one Lord whom we share in common. I sometimes think we take this too much for granted. We have and worship the same Triune God. We acknowledge Him as Lord, which means there is only one way to God through His only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. This is not the trivial pursuit of a shallow, baseless kind of unity so often trumpeted by the liberals. They do the outrageously heretical and then tell us to concentrate on what we have in common, how it far outweighs what we don’t have in common. But I always cringe when they tell me this because we really don’t have more in common. They have taken the creeds and redefined, revised, and reworked them to the point of removing the uniqueness of the Triune God and the Jesus Christ at their center. They have further corrupted the life required of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church also confessed in the creeds by severing them from the morality of the Ten Commandments. As a result, Christ is not the way. And for them the creeds are no longer the unifying symbols of orthodoxy but heterodoxy. These ancient confessions thus no longer stand in opposition to the heresies for which they were written: Arianism, Gnosticism, Nestorianism and so forth. The horrific, bottom line of those those heresies was that they reduced Christianity to being only one among many religious options, which was to remove the distinctives of Christianity altogether. These ancient heresies provided a pluriform theological rationale for polytheism. When St. Paul speaks of the significance of one Lord, this is not to be taken lightly. We here and others like us importantly all agree that the God of the Bible is One Lord. We call Him by the same Name and even more, we do so with the same meaning. We worship Him essentially the same way. We believe He is the only way. This is all extremely critical. We cannot say these things about apostate revisionists, even if they come from the same ecclesiastical lineage. They no longer have one Lord the same way we do.

It seems they commit the same theological and moral fallacies of polytheistic ancient Israel. Remember that Israel’s sin was to allow the reintroduction of the worship of other, local, pagan Canaanite gods. It wasn’t in their minds that they rejected Yahweh. They simply wanted to allow other shrines like Baal and so forth alongside the Biblical God. They were only adding other gods so they thought. Significantly, false gods have false sacraments. And false sacraments amount to sexual perversion. As Mircea Eliade was often fond of implying, there are really only two kinds of sacraments, food and sex. And there’s no question which side the Biblical religion falls on. In God’s mind, however, the notion of Yahweh as one of the good old boy gods of the near eastern ancient world was explicit rejection of Him. To advocate that Yahweh shares in a pantheon with other gods is to denounce Him as God. Essentially Yahweh sent the prophet Elijah to the Ahab and Jezebel to tell them that they couldn’t have it both ways. Only Yahweh was God; there is no other and as He told them in the first commandment, “Ye shall have no other gods besides Me” (Exodus 20:2). Thus the fact that we have one common Lord on whom we call together in one body by one Spirit with one hope is no small matter. How dare we think our other theological concerns are more important than our common belief in the One, Triune Lord.

Next, St. Paul speaks of the one faith we have in common. It seems the mention of having one faith, implies the Faith Once Delivered in an objective sense. We have the same Bible, confess the same creeds, interpret Scripture with the same seven ecumenical councils and the same Anglican formularies allowing for the reforms of the 16th century that restored the Gospel. We believe in the same God from the same heart of Jesus indwelling us. We fall down before the same altar even though it may be simple or ornate. We may wear different vestments. We may attach different ceremonies to our prayer book worship. But we all believe the same Faith, the same God and in the same way. We really do. Some of us may have different devotional practices. We may differ in certain things about the faith. But we differ on nothing that is essential to our God and His salvation by Grace.

Saint Paul wraps up this list with “one God and Father of us all.” We all have a common spiritual origin, God the Father. He is our Father. We do not have different spiritual parents. We are legitimated by our heavenly parentage from God the Father. This is particularly true of those of us in the Anglican branch of the family. Go back far enough and you’ll find that we have the same Anglican family lineage. We have been divided in part by our own doing and in part by others doing. Whatever the case, we are called by St. Paul’s instructions to the Ephesians to endeavor to keep what unity and common heritage we have.

St. Paul commands us to keep the unity we have. This unity he’s described is the Biblical, Apostolic faith and order as well as spirituality. There is God the Father, the Son and the Spirit. There is oneness of faith in this One, True, Triune God. We find the oneness doctrine of the Church and the Sacraments. And we have the doctrine of General Eschatology, the “one hope.” All of us already have this oneness by any standard in the history of Anglicanism. Call it the Anglican formularies or the Lambeth Quadrilateral. Yes, we have differences and nuances but that’s all that are. We have a unity in things essential already. It is not to be missed or taken lightly. It is significant. And it is this unity that we are to preserve. But I fear that we cannot preserve effectively apart from each other. This will require a new kind of unity. In a way, the unfortunate developments in North American Anglicanism provide an opportunity finally to organize further apart from the British Empire structure, to grow into a truly Apostolic model or faith and order. This process was begun over a hundred years ago with the development of the Anglican Communion. But now that communion can move to the next level even though it may go through substantial realignment. To keep the true Apostolic unity we already have we must come in a greater way of aligning ourselves.

I remember seeing a Peanuts comic strip about Lucy and Linus watching television. Linus is watching his favorite program and in storms Lucy demanding that he change the channel to show the one she wants to watch. She threatens him with her fat little fist in his face. Rather meekly he asks her what makes her think she can walk in and take over. She blurts out: “These five fingers!” which she tightens into a fist. Well, it works. Without a word the little guy responds by asking which channel she prefers. Naturally, she gets to watch any channel she wants. Slowly, he slips out of the room, feeling like a wimp. He looks down at his own five fingers and asks, “Why can’t you guys get organized like that?”

I think Linus has a point. Pull the fingers apart and they don’t have much strength. Put them together and they make a hand, a fist even. If we don’t preserve the unity we have, we’ll not be able to accomplish much. We’ll just go on being a bunch of loosely connected fingers. But the analogy presses us to the very point St. Paul makes, an even greater unity. It’s only as those fingers are joined in a greater unity that they’re able to form a fist. This is the not yet unity.

St. Paul takes us to this greater unity in a later reference of Ephesians four. He speaks of a unity not yet accomplished with the language, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the full knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (v. 13). This is the greater “unity of the faith” into which we are called to grow. It is the unity we don’t have. But what is it? And how are we to proceed?

Based on the language of this verse, it would seem first that the unity of the faith implies as few divisions as possible. If the word unity means anything it implies undivided. The Greek word indicates this definition having its origin in the word for “one.” It would seem we have to recognize the oneness we truly have and link together. St. Paul argues that our linking together will become our strength. It’s like an article I recently read about the giant redwood trees in California. The huge redwood trees are considered the largest things on earth and the tallest trees in the world. Some of them are three hundred feet high and over 2,500 years old. One would think that trees so large would have a tremendous root system reaching down hundreds of feet into the earth. The redwoods actually have a very shallow root system, but they all intertwine. They are locked to each other. When the storms come or the winds blow, the redwoods stand. They are locked to each other, and they don’t stand alone, for all the trees support and protect each other. Therefore, we’ve got to stop standing alone against the storms. None of us has the strength and resources to stand alone. So if the greater unity of the faith means anything it means we have to interlock with each other. I think the network is the beginning but what’s the next step?

St. Paul qualifies this greater unity of the faith as the “full knowledge of the Son of God.” When we hear the word knowledge we think information. But that is a Gnostic definition of the Biblical word. Remember the Gnostics believed that knowledge, especially secretly revealed knowledge saved a person. This is not the Biblical meaning of the Greek word which is rooted in the Old Testament use of the word “to know.” Knowledge in the Biblical sense is relation, as in Adam knew Eve. Applied to the relation with God it is not sexual but Eucharistic. The way to become one with God is by means ultimately of communicating Him. Thus, the full knowledge of the Son of God is Eucharistic and communal.

It would seem therefore that we have to move to a point where we are inter-communed with one another. Perhaps we have to start with a communion of communions. I think the network and the larger Anglican Communion offers a context in which this can be worked out. In China there is a legend about a Chinese prince who died and was given a glimpse of both heaven and hell. First, he was escorted to hell, where he found tables laden with various foods and delicacies, but the people were sitting there angry and frustrated, quarreling with each other. They were not permitted to pick up the food with the fingers, and they couldn’t feed themselves because the chopsticks they were given were ten feet long. Then the prince was taken to heaven. Again he found a beautiful banquet, and again only ten-foot chopsticks. But here the people were happy and content, for they sat on opposite sides of the tables, each one feeding the person across from him. It seems the fragmentation in North American Anglicanism faces a similar challenge. Maybe we have to be ten feet from one another but at least we have to come to same table and feed each other the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation. That’s a kind of greater Eucharistic unity that could move us forward to what Saint Paul calls the “mature man.”

The “mature man” of which the Apostle speaks implies another kind of greater unity. A mature man is able to reproduce and multiply himself. This is the unity of mission in the Church. And it would seem that we need unity to conduct the mission now required in North America. No one of our groups has enough resources to fund true church planting, the kind for example that can plant new, Biblical and orthodox Anglican parishes in every major city in America. Imagine if we could unite and pool our resources for evangelism and mission. What would happen if we could plant ten to fifteen new churches a year? Why we would surpass the Episcopal Church in a decade. We could rebuild this thing better than it’s ever been in a score of years. But I repeat, we need to combine our resources not only for the mission but to train the new priest/missionaries in seminaries. Why in just matter of time we could replace the seminaries and begin to rebuild. But we can’t do it unless we unite. I came across a fascinating little poem that makes the point. It’s called Hezekiah 6:14 by Gerhard Frost. The poem goes like the following:

“The reason mountain climbers are tied together is to keep the sane ones from going home.”

I don’t know who said it, Or when, or where, But I’ve chuckled over it, Thought about it, and quoted it, too.

With a mountain of mercy behind me And a mountain of mission ahead, I need you, my sister, my brother, I need to be tied to you, And you need me, too.

We need each other . . . To keep from bolting, Fleeing in panic, and returning To the “sanity” of unbelief.

Wise words, whoever said them; I’ve placed them in my “bible”; They are my Hezekiah 6:14

Of course there’s no Biblical book actually by the name of Hezekiah but it does provide a piece of wisdom that approaches Scriptural proportions. I think it captures the sense of St. Paul’s “mature man,” the body of Christ healthy and able to reproduce with a common mission.

To have this Biblical, Apostolic, undivided, Eucharist mission, we must come together in ways that we have not been united in recent years. In a way, we must come back together. We must have a grand service of reunion of Biblically orthodox North American Anglicanism. And we must do this before we fragment further, before it’s too late. The story is told of a time when a little child in an African tribe wandered off into the tall jungle grass and could not be found, although the tribe searched all day. The next day the tribal members all held hands and walked through the grass together. This enabled them to find the child, but due to the cold night he had not survived. In her anguish and through her tears, the mother cried, “If only we would have held hands sooner.”

My brothers and sisters in Christ, I fear that this will be the epitaph written on the tombstone of orthodox Anglicanism if we don’t come together and reunite. Here lies orthodox Anglicanism because it didn’t join hands sooner. So let us join hands. Let us join hands to keep the Biblical and Apostolic unity we already have. But we have a need for the not yet of the unity we possess. So let us also join hands to achieve an even greater undivided and Eucharistic unity for the massive mission of God that lies ahead of us all. And let us do so before it is too late and we end up crying like that African mother, “If only we had joined hands sooner.” That we might avoid such delay, I close with Edward Pusey’s stirring and touching words concluding his brilliant work, Eirenicon:

The strife with unbelief stretches and strains the powers of the Church everywhere; Satan’s armies are united, at least in the warfare against “the truth as it is in Jesus.” Are those who would maintain the faith in Him alone to be at variance? . . . we long to see the Church united; to all who . . . desire to see intercommunion restored among those who hold the faith of the undivided Church, we say, “This is not our longing only; this is impressed on our Liturgy by those who were before us; for this, whenever we celebrate the Holy Eucharist, we are bound to pray, that God ‘would inspire continually the Universal Church with the Spirit of truth, unity and concord.’” For this I pray daily. For this I would gladly die. “O Lord, tarry not.” (p. 150)

Amen.

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Ping.