Homily preached at the Grosvenor Chapel for Christian Unity Week (Third Sunday in Ordinary Time)

This homily was preached by Fr Nicholas King SJ at the Grosvenor Chapel (Church of England)

Scripture Readings: Nehemiah 8:2-6,8-10; I Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4,4:14-21

What are we who are committed Christians to do about the scandal of Christian disunity? Well, the readings that you have just heard suggest two things that we might do: first, that we hold our eyes fixed on God, and, second, that we keep our ears alert to God’s word.

In that first reading, from Nehemiah, Israel have now been back from exile for 100 years; But they're still a shambles, and the morality of their society leaves much to be desired. You may see similarities with our own society today: there is oppression of the poor, there is violence and theft; and Ezra, at the request of the king of Persia, was supposed to have found a solution; but nothing much has happened. So what does he do? He reads the Bible from day-break to midday; (I'm not sure we could get away with that today) but absolutely everyone in Israel, men, women and children, find themselves gathered in the square by the Water Gate. He starts where we must always start, by blessing God, and the people responding “Amen, amen”, which means that “Yes, we agree”; Ezra and the officials explain the law but not in such a way as to accuse the people of Israel (accusation is a very tempting option for those who are religious, but it must always be resisted). Instead, they are told not to be sad and not to weep. And the reason? Because “Your strength must be your rejoicing in the Lord”. And then they have a procession to celebrate the feast of Sukkot (booths on the roof), which Jews still celebrate down to this day. And what does this mean for us? It means that we need to celebrate God's word with rejoicing and thanksgiving; let us listen out for that voice, and act upon it today. Perhaps we might do that as we try and find our way back to full Christian union. And above all this, is the command to “remember the poor” as Ezra did on that day. That is what God always asks of us. And, very often, Christians have discovered that they belong together, simply through the joy of working together, and then praying about it afterwards. Certainly that was very much my experience of the years working in South Africa, people discovering how much they have in common, simply through the experience of working together against the evils of apartheid, and enduring the persecution of those who worked for justice.

And it is to God that we must always listen. That is the message that comes across loud and clear in the psalm we have just heard and sung: the psalmist’s absolute confidence that God speaks to us in creation: the poet says, “the heavens declare the glory of God…their sound has gone out into all lands”. Then comes that lovely picture of God putting “a pavilion for the sun in the depths of the ocean”. If together we recognise that unfailing presence of God in the universe, then naturally we shall come together to worship this God, and then focus quite naturally on what unites us rather than what divides us.

That is what was going on in in the second reading. You may recall that the Christians of Corinth were fighting, as the saying goes, “like rats in a sack”. Paul was horrified at this turn of events, and most of the letter is spent in trying to persuade them to turn back from their squabbling; but not to much effect, so far as we can tell. What he does is to use the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit, seeing the Spirit (and we shall do well to imitate him) as the way of finding unity among the scattered people of God. The point is that we are all different, but that there is something of preciousness in our diversity, and that God is at work in that diversity of ours, which is a source of rejoicing, not one of bewildering quarrels. You may be Anglican and I may be Catholic; but the fact of key importance is that the Spirit blows through our differences to make God’s rich mix. Paul makes his point with originality and humour, and tries on them the idea of a foot or an ear or an eye declaring UDI, and saying to the rest of the body, “So I don’t belong to you lot”. But that is not the way it works; we all belong together in the Body of Christ, and must keep our eye on the calling of the Spirit, which is the source of our profound unity. And that then leads Paul straight into his great hymn to love, which was his last, and alas unsuccessful, attempt to stop the squabbling. So we must keep an eye on what unites us, not what divides us; and that is the God whom we encounter in the Holy Spirit.

In the gospel, as so often in Luke, we hear of the Holy Spirit at work; Jesus is “filled with the power of the Spirit”. Now Luke places this story right at the beginning of Jesus’ mission, which is not where he found it in Mark, whose gospel he had open before him. For Luke has made this the very first episode of Jesus’ ministerial career, and so we are supposed to read the rest of the gospel in the light of it. And what are we to say about it?

First, that Jesus plays the part of a good Jewish boy, which he certainly was, going to synagogue on the Sabbath day. Then we watch, as Luke makes us wait, to see what will happen. First he stands up (apparently without being invited to do so) to read a text; then we watch him unroll the scroll, find the right place, and read. Notice how we cannot take our eyes off Jesus at this point; and how we cannot help but focus on what he and his Father are up to (which is of course where we should always be looking). Now he tells us, and once more the Spirit is there, and we discover what the Spirit is up to: “good news to the poor, liberty to captives, rediscovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, a year for the Lord’s favour”. Do you see how the focus is all the time on what God is doing? It is also, of course, on what Jesus is doing, and what the HSP is up to.

And so Lk makes us watch, as Jesus rolls up the scroll, returns it to the attendant, and deliver his sermon; it is the shortest sermon in all history, (and do you not wish that all preachers, including this one, imitated Jesus’ brevity?). “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your ears”. And there you have it: we watch agog, to see what Jesus is up to, what the HSP is doing, and what the Father is saying. And that is how you and I are to deal with our painful divisions, by keeping our ears and our eyes, not on how right we are and how wrong those others are, but on God and on Jesus and on their HSP. Shall we try that, you and I, in the course of this week of prayer for Christian Unity.