Worship
Sermon Archive
Sunday January 24, 2010
11:00 am - Saint Thomas Church
Preacher: The Rev'd Dr William G Rusch
Nehemiah 8:2-10
I Corinthians 12:12-27
Luke 4:14-21
A Sermon for the Octave Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
I am told that on one Sunday some years ago the Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London entered the pulpit and began his remarks by saying, “Before I preach, I want to say something important!” I have often wondered about the content of the sermon that followed. So before I preach, I want to say something appropriate. I wish to thank the rector of Saint Thomas’s for the privilege of being with you and for the opportunity to preach. I also want to express this gratitude succinctly because although I see no trap door or clock in this pulpit, I know there are strict limits on the time available. So thank you!
We have heard together this morning three passages of Scripture. I want to look at those passages with you in the context of where we find ourselves today. We are here together in the concluding days of The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. This week is observed annually from January 18th until January 25th. It is based on the conviction that common prayer together by Christians is fundamental to the search for the gift of the visible unity of Christ’s Church – a unity that is clearly the desire of Christ for his people.
The roots of the idea of this week are deeply Anglican and go back to the work of Father Paul Wattson in 1908 when he was an Anglican. Today the materials for this week are prepared jointly by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity of the Vatican. So we have heard these words of Scripture at a time when all Christians should especially reflect that God in Christ wishes God’s people to be visibly one and when they are visibly and scandalously not one but disunited and divided.
I am going to reflect on these three passages of Scripture not in the order that they were read, but chronologically, in the order of the events they describe.
The earliest passage in time is the first text that we heard this morning. It is portraying events after members of the Jewish community have returned from the hard years of exile in the year 520 B.C. and after the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem in 445 B.C.. Some 2,500 years separate us from these incidents. A priest and scribe named Ezra has come to Jerusalem with a copy of the Law of Moses. The passage describes the public reading of that Law. Ezra is encouraging a repentant people to rejoice, participate in the festival and return home strengthened by God’s Word. We are witnessing a people shaped and ordered according to God’s Word. It is a community finally not held together by ties of blood, soil, or politics. It is a community that shares redemption by God and a common commitment to obey the Lord who has redeemed them. When this group forgets that mutual redemption, it ceases to be that community. Are not the parallels with that community and the Church obvious? For we as Christians believe that we have our root-age and inheritance in that fellowship of God’s covenant people. It is not some other clique on which we are eavesdropping in this reading.
The second text chronologically is the last passage that was read, the Gospel. Here we are given a glimpse at an event that probably occurred in about A.D. 30. Jesus of Nazareth is in a synagogue on the Sabbath. We are told two things about this occurrence: this was the regular practice of Jesus. In our terms, he was regular church-goer. And it was the synagogue in the community where he grew up. He is in his “home-church” so to speak. This selection from Luke places Jesus exactly in that community pictured for us in the first reading. It underscores for us that Christ is the fulfiller of the Ezra community and again the importance of that covenant- redeemed community for our understanding of who we are.
What does Christ do in that setting? He stresses who he is by word and action. He stands up and takes the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He reads; rolls up the scroll; hands it back to the attendant; he sits. All eyes are now on him. Jesus has taken the proclamation of the coming Messiah and applied to himself. He has announced that this is the decisive hour, for he tells his fellow-worshipers in that synagogue today this Scripture is fulfilled in their hearing. The community addressed by Ezra and the gathering of folks in that synagogue building in Galilee, and those folks assembled today around the world and at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street are now viewed as a fellowship and community under the Lordship of this Jesus of Nazareth who will bring good news to the poor, proclaim the release of captives, the recovery of sight to the blind and let the oppressed go free.
Now we must turn to that final passage of Scripture in chronological terms. The Apostle Paul is speaking to the same community that has its roots in the Ezra gathering and in the synagogue in Galilee, but is now found in that ancient port of Corinth. The year is probably A.D. 59, or a year very close to it, some 20 years after Jesus’ dramatic reading and announcement in Galilee. Paul is emphasizing for that community, which was extremely diverse in many ways, that they are one. He is saying in spite of all their contention, all their dissimilarity present in Corinth, this community of Christ is to be united. Paul uses the analogy of the human body. Paul reminds them in this community there is no place for pride. All the diverse gifts are necessary. There is no place for self-denigration, every gift is necessary. There is no one in this community who has received all the gifts of the Spirit.
All three of these readings speak of that community which we claim to be as Christians. They remind us of the origin of that community in the action of God, the Lordship of that community in Jesus Christ, and the essential nature of that community as unity within appropriate diversity.
Recall that we heard these texts in the context of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. We are reminded that the followers of Jesus Christ are not visibly one. We reflect to the contemporary world the deep scars of our visible disunity. Karl Barth, undoubtably one of the great theologian minds of the last century, once addressed this issue. he stated, ” There is no doubt that to the extent that Christendom does consist of actually different and opposing Churches, to that extent it denies practically what it confesses theoretically – the unity and the singularity of the Church of God, of Jesus Christ, of the Holy Spirit. There may be good grounds for the rise of these divisions. There may be serious obstacles to their removal. There may be many things which can be said by way of interpretation and mitigation. But this does not alter the fact that every division as such is a deep riddle, a scandal.”
We may rejoice that at the beginning of this century and at the hundredth anniversary of the modern ecumenical movement much of the disunity of the Church can be put behind us. Churches like yours and mine can live their lives in faith together in ecumenical organizations. Such groups promote the unity of the Church and address urgent needs of society. They produced documents like Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry in which the churches can find agreement on the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist and the office of ministry. These organizations have assisted in the retreat and elimination of apartheid.
Lutherans and Roman Catholics can resolve the theological issue that cause the split in the western church at the time of the Reformation. Reformed Christians and Lutherans can reach an understanding about Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Anglicans and Roman Catholics can conduct a successful dialogue lasting decades. Episcopalians and Lutherans in the United States can live in a relation whose goal is full communion. Thus a Lutheran pastor can stand in an Episcopal pulpit.
Yet much remains to be done as we all pray for the Triune God’s healing Spirit. Nevertheless we should conclude this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2010 with a profound sense of gratitude for what has been given us and a humble expectation of what the Lord of the Church may yet do with and for his people.