Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Image from the Archdiocese of Malta webpage

Many of you may know that I have recently returned home from a month long trip in Germany to visit my brother James.  I have lots of thoughts about that trip which I look forward to sharing with you.  However, I'm not going to do that right now, though this post may, in a way, be an introduction to those thoughts.

My new desk-top calendar from PTS tells me that today is the "Day of Prayer for Christian Unity," and I decided to try to find out more about it (despite the fact that Wikipedia is down today in protest of the current anti-piracy bills before Congress).  It turns out today is the first day of a whole WEEK of prayer for Christian unity (Jan 18-25).  If you're curious, check out the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute for more info about it, and for study/reflection/worship resources visit the World Council of Churches page and download a copy of the "brochure" in the language of your choice.

I have felt the need for Christian unity very deeply in the last several months - particularly in my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA).  In the summer of 2010, our most comprehensive governing body made a decision on a controversial topic, that of course many feel strongly about.  And, because we're Presbyterian and develop momentum slowly (somewhat similarly, I suppose, to a reaction to poison oak or ivy), the implications, reactions, and responses have been emerging and picking up steam gradually since then.  Which means that I, as a theologically moderate Presbyterian, have had plenty of agonizing time to watch, seemingly helplessly, as the denomination I love and have been preparing to serve drifts deliberately into ever increasingly distant factions and devolves toward schism.


I suppose I have probably felt this most keenly because my home congregation - the one who birthed and nurtured my faith, who first inspired me to pursue a life of service to the Church, who is the basis of my grounding in the Presbyterian tradition, and the congregation who is sponsoring my preparation for ordination in this denomination - my home congregation seems to be leaning further and further toward filing for denominational divorce.

I love my congregation, and I love my denomination.  And I want very badly for them to get along.  I feel much like I suspect a child caught in the middle between bickering parents might feel: increasingly frustrated with their seemingly willful misunderstandings of one another.

What happened to "bearing with one another in love" (Ephesians 4:2)?  Or demonstrating that we will be known as Christ's "disciples if [we] have love for one another" (John 13:35)?  Or "not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more" (Hebrews 10:25)?

I have also really appreciated that our denominational constitution acknowledges that "we also believe that there are truths and forms with respect to which [people] of good characters and principles may differ. And in all these we think it the duty both of private Christians and societies to exercise mutual forbearance toward each other" (F-3.0105, formerly G-1.0305).  Sadly, Christians have never been very good at this.  And now is no exception.

Yet I do believe that our God is one, and that Christ gives the Church its life, calling, and mission.  And because Christ is the one head of the Church, the Church is also one, even as it tries not to be.  And because the triune God is Lord of the Church and is the God that is, we can have hope that the Church will somehow and someday be the unified body it was meant to be.

So please join with me, and Christians and congregations around the world, in desperately pleading God to heal our divisions and call us anew to something greater and beyond ourselves, the service and work of Christ's perfect plan for the world.