16 May 2010

Breaking Chains

It really should be easy to write a reflection on ‘breaking chains’ from a Christian perspective. We believe in and pray for peace and justice do we not? We pray for the oppressed, whether by war or by totalitarian regimes, and for our Christian brothers and sisters who suffer religious persecution in various parts of the world’. How truly marvellous it would be if all our prayers were answered and these chains were to be broken.

It is relatively easy, with the comfort of distance and a stable political and social system, to pray that the chains of other less favoured than us be broken. It is in fact something most of us would consider a natural part of the ministry of all the baptised. For some of this will not be the case, as we may have family or friends caught up in the depressingly frequent scenes of oppression and persecution around the world.

Unity is one characteristic that cannot be ascribed to the human race at any point in its history, and even as followers of Christ often it eludes us.

In the Gospel for Easter 7 we, like the disciples, are the privileged audience to the third part of what has become known as the Great High Priestly Prayer: Jesus’ last dialogue with the Father before his death and resurrection.

Jesus prays on behalf of all those who will believe in him through the word of the apostles for oneness, for unity. We might be forgiven for thinking that God declined to answer this part of the Great Prayer, yet the truth is that it is our stubborn and dogmatic human nature that prevents us from attaining unity.

As Christians we have argued from the first century onwards about the right and wrong way to worship, and from time to time we have gone to war with each other just to prove that one way of godliness is superior to another. Jesus saw the opportunity for worship and community whenever ”two or three are gathered together in his name”, but burdened as we are by our humanity we see an opportunity to give our group a name, write a set of rules for the group and declare to the world that our group has all the answers.

The churches have long recognised this problem and there are many ecumenical movements and initiatives, but people fear unity as they confuse it with uniformity (as do some of the ecumenical groups).

It is right that we continue to pray that the iniquitous chains of oppression across the world be broken, but Jesus give us an example in the Great Prayer to pray that we make break the chains we ourselves make to imprison us in our divisions. Eli Stanley Jones, the 20th Century Methodist missionary once said “Talk about what you believe and you have disunity. Talk about who you believe in and you have unity”

Sam Held is our preacher this morning. He is a trained counsellor, a vestry member and is currently exploring ministry and vocation.