We continue our series on the Apostles' Creed this week by taking a small diversion. Up to this point, we have thought about what the Creed has to say about God the Father, about Jesus the Son, and about the Holy Spirit. But now we reach the stage where the Creed says something about the church. This is controversial territory when we consider that the Gospels don't actually describe Jesus founding what we would recognise today as a church.
The Apostles' Creed says simply, 'I believe in the catholic church'. However, in order to unpack some of the meaning behind this statement, this week and next week we are going to take our diversion into the text of another Creed - the Creed which was hammered into shape largely at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and which is known to us as the Nicene Creed. This more-developed Creed takes the one statement about the church found in the Apostles' Creed and spells out four features which it identifies as hallmarks of the authentic church of Jesus Christ. It describes the church as being one, holy, catholic and apostolic. And this week we will look at the first two of those hallmarks, while next week Andy will cover the features of the church which are catholic and apostolic.
It seems strange to say that the church is one when, most of the time we observe the church throughout the world, we see a splintered body, divided and in conflict over beliefs, with competing claims to the essentials of the Christian faith.
The history of the broad movement we might call the Christian Church presents a very mixed picture of a few saintly figures intermingled with an awful lot of political intrigue, rivalry, worldly power, cruelty, corruption, exclusion, pride and bigotry. Even in the earliest days of the apostolic church, there were disagreements and minor breakaways from true unity: one of the earliest disputes was whether non-Jews could become followers of the Christian Way without first becoming Jews. It is tempting to think that complete unity was present when Jesus sat with his twelve closest followers and taught them his vision of the Kingdom of God on earth. But even then, one of the twelve was nursing other plans which led to what the remaining followers saw as an act of betrayal.
It is not easy to pin down exactly what we mean when we say we believe in a church that is 'one'. The Christian Movement has never known true unity; but it continues to survive as a bearer of Jesus's message to the world.
It seems equally strange to say that the church is holy when we look back on that history of horror. Apart from the atrocities carried out over 2000 years in the name of the God of love, so much of the church's energy has been spent putting up sectarian barriers to keep holy people in, and sinful people out. If you are holy enough to join one of these sects, you can expect privilege - if not in this world, then in the next. If you are not holy enough, you can expect exclusion, deprivation and persecution.
Do we believe in a church which is holy if this is how it lives out its holiness?
It's not easy to pin down exactly what we mean by a holy church. The Christian Movement has never achieved true holiness; but it continues to survive as a bearer of Jesus's message to the world.
And what about us gathered here today? We who belong to one of the newest splinter groups of the splintered Christian Movement: we who have often been rejected by other branches of the church because our diversity makes us unholy in their eyes. Can we possibly be part of the one, holy church? Or are we just a small, well-meaning group, living through our delusions and providing mutual support in our private world? One of the regular questions which people ask when they encounter us is 'Yes, very nice; but are they really a church?'
So, we've arrived at three questions: In what sense is the church 'one'; in what sense is the church 'holy'; and is MCC part of the one, holy church?
One way of approaching the question of church unity is to say that it is something which is unachievable in this world, but is something promised in the world to come: the present splintering, conflict and disunity is temporary and will be resolved at the end of time. This approach says that although the visible church here on earth may be divided, there is also the invisible, heavenly church stretched out through time and space like a mighty army. And at the end of time this whole church will unite. In fact one of the modern statements of faith we sometimes use in this church expresses this with the words, 'We believe in one, holy, universal and caring church which is yet to be.'
Another answer to the question of unity takes us away from looking at the church as a structure or organisation, and asks us to consider what the church is actually about. If we believe that the church is about Jesus, then we can believe that the oneness of the church is in its belief in Christ, not in any historical or cultural framework. This is often summarised in the phrase, 'Where Christ is, the church is'. The church is one as long as every church community has a common calling from Jesus. In other words, unity is not to be understood in a historical or systematic way but in a theological way. Hans Kung, a modern Catholic theologian said:
'It is one and the same God who gathers the scattered from all places and all ages and makes them into one people of God. It is one and the same Christ who, through his word and spirit, unites all together in the same bond of fellowship of the same body of Christ... The church is one and therefore should be one.'
In effect, Kung is saying that there is a fundamental unity within the church which may be adapted by God to meet different purposes in different times and in different places.
When we come to the question: 'In what sense is the church holy', we can only fall back on what we already know - the church is full of sinners and is bound to reflect many aspects of human failings. Saint Augustine pointed out that the church was not meant to be a society of saints, but a mixed body of both saints and sinners. He used the image of the disciples using a net to catch fish. In that net, both good and bad fish were caught. In the same way the church includes both good and bad people. Our second reading, where the farmer has to allow the weeds to grow alongside the good wheat until the weeds can be separated without damage to the wheat, supports Augustine's view that God will separate out the saints from the sinners at the end of time. But, in the meantime, the church remains a mixed bag of all kinds.
But the church remains holy, not because of its members, but because of its head. The church is made holy by Christ. There is nothing we can do to make our Christian communities even more pure. There have been many attempts at restricting the church to the morally pure, and some of these did produce communities which led very good lives, but the price of such purity was almost always exclusion of others from the life of the community. We are left with the fact that the church remains a diverse mixture of saints and sinners, all of whom are sanctified by Jesus as a community of followers.
Those of us associated with MCC know a lot about exclusion. We are rarely invited to join the ranks of the morally pure in their exclusive communities. Perhaps that is why God raised up our church through the prophetic ministry of a rejected Pentecostal minister; not only to be a spiritual home for those rejected by other churches, but to live out a reality of inclusion, where the unconditional love of Jesus would make each of us worthy to be his disciple.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Metropolitan Community Church is an authentic branch of the church of Jesus Christ, raised up by God with a mission for this time and for this place. We can point to lives which have been saved and changed by meeting Jesus here and experiencing his love and his power to heal the hurt and pain of rejection and isolation. We can point to ministries which have blossomed in people who never knew they could aspire to holiness but only ever believed they were sinners.
So when people ask whether we are truly part of the one, holy church of Christ, we can answer boldly, 'Christ is here among us. We know Christ has called us into his body, the church. And although we may be sinners because we are human, Christ is the head of our church and makes us holy. God has raised us up to be the church and we know we make a difference in our time and place. Yes, we are part of the one, holy church of Christ.'
And we say to the person who asks whether we are really a church, "You are welcome here; you may be called to be here; we believe you will meet Jesus here. What better test of a church can we offer you than that?"
Amen.
(Philip Jones)
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
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