The Sermon by Rev'd Dr. Brian Porter
Senior Chaplain Melbourne Grammar School
and
Hon Assoc Priest
St. John’s Camberwell
7th Sunday in Easter 2004
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
8.00am and 10.00am
Texts: Acts 16: 16-34
Ps. 97
Rev 22: 12-14, 16-17, 20-21
Mark 17: 20-26
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St John’s Camberwell
23rd May 2004
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Preamble from the Pew Sheet . . .
THINK GLOBALLY; ACT LOCALLY
Greenies and environmentalists have this as one of their mantras.
Humankind faces unprecedented challenges as those four eco-disaster amber
lights continue to flash their warnings to all travellers on Spaceship Earth:
global warming, population explosion, nuclear proliferation and war, whether
civil or international. Jesus’ prayer "that they may all be one" is not just for
ecumaniacs: it applies to the whole human family. But if we do apply it to the
religious dimension it is a profoundly important mantra for inter-faith dialogue
which grows beyond ancient chauvinisms. However inside our own Christian tradition
it is an imperative we cannot ignore particularly in relation to the Roman Catholic
Church, the Anglican Communion agonising over gay and women bishops, and in the
Anglican Church of Australia as it works out through General Synod how to hold
together when the rich and powerful Diocese of Sydney is intent on fighting the
Reformation all over again.
Here in Camberwell Our Lady of Victories
up the hill waves to us at St John’s as does St Mark’s at the other end of Burke Rd
and a bit further on, St Hilary’s Kew winks at us with its Sydney style worship very
different from our liturgies. Yet unity does not have to be uniformity. This is the
genius of Anglicanism. And we don’t have to like those we are called upon to love.
This is what every family knows in its bones. May we truly all be one as Jesus prays.
The Reverend Dr Brian Porter
The Sermon . . .
"That they may all be one."
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| Rev'd Dr. Brian Porter
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The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins today and is initiated this morning by
these words from the high priestly prayer of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel.
Being an ecumaniac for my 35 years in the ordained ministry - I actually served
for a season on the executive of the VCC - I have listened to or endured
innumerable sermons on Christian unity. In case your eyes glaze over I shall
try to say something challenging this morning.
Let it be this: firstly, unity is not uniformity. It is something much deeper.
Secondly, you don’t have to like people you are called to love.
Thirdly, the micro matters as much as the macro: thinking globally must be
matched by acting locally.
My reflection along these lines has been much helped, as in most things by Rowan Williams.
The Archbishop of Canterbury had a daunting challenge recently in preaching to the
General Synod of the Church of Ireland assembled in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh.
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St Patrick's Anglican Cathedral
Armagh
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St Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral
Armagh
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Note the setting: bleeding Ireland rent with sectarian animosity. This is how he began:
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St Paul's Anglican Cathedral
Uganda
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Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral
Uganda
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" Armagh is not the only city with two cathedrals facing each other
from two hills. If you go to Kampala, you’ll see exactly the same phenomenon - the
great Anglican cathedral at Namirembe and the Roman Catholic cathedral on the other
side of the city, looking across at each other a bit suspiciously.
Yet in Kampala the presence of those two great buildings affirms not only the
separation of two Christian communities but their common origins. For the Roman
Catholic Church and the Anglican Church in Uganda began their work at the same time - and
began with one of the most dramatic and heartrending records of martyrdom in the
whole of missionary history. Several dozen new Christians, mostly young pageboys
from the royal court, were butchered by the King with every refinement of cruelty;
Catholics and Protestants alike witnessed to their faith in the most extreme circumstances,
dying with joy and courage. Some of the Anglican martyrs went to be burned alive
singing the hymn, ‘Daily, daily, sing the praises Of the city God has made’; and
the story is that the night after their deaths, a young man made his way in secret
to the devastated and grieving CMS evangelist, Mackay, and asked for baptism because
he wanted to know how to die like that. "
When Pope Paul visited Uganda in 1964 to pronounce the canonization of the
Catholic martyrs, he generously paid tribute to those Protestants who had shared
their fate, recognizing that the whole Church is built up by such witness not
just one part of it. And so it is that when you look at the two cathedrals in
Kampala, you sense not only the divisions but the common roots of faith today.
Catholic or Protestant, it all began in a moment when the cross of Christ was made
contemporary in the witness of these young men, young in years and in faith, but mature
in commitment:The two buildings in Armagh likewise remind us of a single origin.
As always, Rowan Williams takes us wider, higher and deeper.
Let me try a few more exercises in contextualization. Here we are on Camberwell’s hill,
half way up. A bit higher up we have the splendid Romanesque Basilica of Our Lady
of Victories whose lustrous and triumphalist golden image gilds the skyline.
St Johns and the Basilica stare at each other, like those two cathedrals in Armagh,
a bit suspiciously or if that’s a bit strong, pretending that the other is not there.
If we soar even higher we might catch a glimpse of the Anglican Church of Australia
wrestling with such vexatious issues as women bishops and lay presidency at the Eucharist.
Of our 23 Dioceses there are five which still will not ordain women as priests and our
next door neighbour in Ballarat won’t even recognize women deacons who at least have a
role in Sydney. That Diocese however, our oldest, largest and richest is about to put
lay presidency through its Synod. Then if we soar even higher we might contemplate the
world wide 70 million strong Anglican Communion self-lacerating over gay bishops and the
whole question of authority, whether of scripture or the dispersion or centralisation of
authority when autonomous local churches are determined to self-regulate and avoid a quasi
papalisation emanating from Canterbury or Lambeth.
Let’s soar even higher still out beyond the ozone layer, getting thinner and thinner,
and catch a glimpse of Spaceship Earth. Humankind is being warned by those who see
clearly that those four horsemen of the Apocalypse are cantering ahead at breakneck speed:
the pollution of air, sea and land despite the Kyoto Protocols; overpopulation and
malnutrition; civil and international warfare with nuclear warfare menacing all of us;
and the widening gulf between the minority rich and privileged, such as ourselves, and
the majority with nothing, for whom each day is struggle and misery. There is an
overwhelming imperative to think globally by acting locally.
So let’s turn the beam back upon ourselves sitting here in well upholstered St John’s
Camberwell. Unity does not mean uniformity nor do we have to like people we are called
to love.
In the local churches externally, and internally within our own congregation,
our likings and dislikings often seem so petty don’t they? We are so programmed
by our psyches, our personalities, our Myers-Briggs typology and the power games
we play, our Freudian, Jungian and Adlerian drives, our political views and our
aesthetics, that we more often than not dig in rather than take off.
If we are all to be one as Jesus prayed we need to soar rather than tunnel,
explore rather than draw the blinds and re-order our human and ecclesial priorities.
I would like my hero Rowan Williams to have the last word this morning as he reflects
on the incarnation:
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| Archbishop Rowan Williams
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" In a situation where God is feared and mistrusted by human
beings, God becomes human - to share the world of those who were his enemies
and to risk what they risk, temptation, rejection, death. It is as if God says,
‘I see the God you see, the God who is distant and hostile or unpredictable;
and the only way I can show you the truth is by living in your midst a human
life of such reconciled trust that you will see God afresh. "
‘Reconciled trust’, now there’s a challenge. Whether as human beings worried
about planetary survival and its quality of life for everyone, or as Australians
worried about the "welcome" we offer to refugees, or as Christians who believe
that what we commonly believe about Jesus is more important than what we can’t
believe, or as Anglicans, high, low or nebulous, or as parishioners of St Johns
with all its recent troubles and challenging fresh opportunities, ‘reconciled trust’
would seem to be a final mantra for me to leave with you as Jesus prays through
us this morning that we might all be one.
Published by permission of the Author. © The Author retains full Copyright.