January 26, 2015
With each year of experience in church unity work, I have become more and more convinced that, no matter how important theological work is for reconstituting unity, the real crux is to preserve and deepen the experience of unity on the local level.
During the 2015 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, I participated in four different services – one at a Franciscan monastery, one in a Lutheran church, one in a seminary and one in the Catholic cathedral. Of course, part of the motivation for going derives from prayer, but part of it also derives from the opportunity to encounter people with whom we have all too few opportunities to meet and talk.
The division and separation of the churches both within Western Europe and between East and West was in significant measure the result of broken fellowship and communication. Particularly between Eastern and Western Christians, this was then confirmed by the fact that people literally no longer had the language to communicate with one another.
Similarly in our time, coming to theological consensus over time through the official dialogues will open the door to church unity, but the only thing that will get us through that door is growing together in newly discovered fellowship and commitment at local levels.
It is communities of believers, even more than articles of belief, that need to be reconciled. Love alone makes truth a lived reality and sets us free to make new beginnings. When I was a seminarian, one of my professors gave me a word of wisdom that has stayed with me: “Meet people on a human level first and just get to know them before you try to talk theology with them.”
When we get to know one another on a human level, a trust is born that enables us together to broach the most sensitive subjects in a spirit of mutual respect. And the better we get to know one another – no matter how different our backgrounds – the more we recognize similarities between us. The Christ in me warms to the Christ in the other. Put in another way, the closer we draw to the center of our faith lives, the closer we draw to each other.
[Editor’s note: Part II will be posted on Tuesday, Jan. 27.]