“Is Christ divided?”
31. Januar 2014
Abbot Gregory, Sermon for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Upper Room (31.01.2014)
Abbot Gregory in the Upper Room
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Once again we stand together in the Upper Room during this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, to listen to the Word of God and let it confront us. This year’s theme is particularly challenging. It asks us to consider St. Paul’s question to the Corinthians: “Has Christ been divided?” (1 Cor.1:13). Actually, the question was even more challenging because it was not just “Has Christ been divided” but “Is Christ divided?”
Paul’s question was a rhetorical one and he surely awaited the only answer that could be given - the answer, “No!” Christ never has and never can be divided! There are two reasons for that.
First: because, as Byzantine Christians sing at every celebration of the Eucharist, Christ is “one of the Holy Trinity.” As the Eternal Son of God he is forever one with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the unity of their undivided divine nature. Even during the days of his earthly ministry the Incarnate Son of God proclaimed this unity, saying, “I am not alone for the Father is with me” (Jn. 16:32) and “The Father and I are one!” (Jn.10:30)
Second reason: Christ is also undivided in his human incarnation. As the Word-made-flesh (Jn.1: 14) and “splendor of the Father” he is as perfectly one with us as he is perfectly one with God. His unity with the Father is mirrored in his unity with us, for he is as complete in his humanity as in his divinity. Just as he is eternally undivided from the Father, so he shares our human condition so fully that he enjoys undivided unity with us. He will never be separated from us in any way. Paul and John’s great images of Christ as the Head of his Body the Church (Col.1:18) and as the True Vine (Jn.15:1-8), of which Christians are the branches, express symbolically this basic truth of our faith.
Yet while we know that Christ is undivided we also know - only too sadly – that Christians are not. After all, that is why we gather to pray this week! The history of the Church is full of schisms, divisions and persecutions - and not only here in the Holy Land. We all know that hatred, bitterness and division are still found among those who profess to follow Christ. It is supremely ironic that anybody might hate, seek revenge, or even kill, in the name of one who gave up his life that the scattered children of God might be gathered into unity, and who asked the Father to forgive even those who nailed him to the cross.
Yes, divisions are still among us today. Even if we have usually – though not always - stopped actively hating each other, we are still divided by doctrines and beliefs and I think this is unlikely to change during my lifetime. How should we respond to this distressing fact? Should we just throw up our hands in despair and think that even God is unable to bring about reconciliation? Should we just live with the fact that however undivided Christ the Head may be, his Body the Church is doomed to perpetual fragmentation? In other words: is Christ’s Body on earth doomed to division? Dear brothers and sisters, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, may the same answer resound once more: “Never!”
Therefore, instead of falling into despair, let us go deeper in our reflections. Let the word of St. Paul, in its original context, accompany us into the depths.
When he wrote his letter to the Corinthians exhorting them to resolve the divisions in their community, Paul named the two great realities at the heart of our Christian faith: the cross and baptism. For immediately after asking his first rhetorical question, “Is Christ divided”, he asked two more: “Was Paul crucified for you?” And again, “Were you baptized in the name of Paul?”
Was Paul crucified for you? No! Jesus Christ - and he alone - was crucified for us! There is no other name given us, under heaven, by which we may be saved (Acts 4: 12). Dying he destroyed our death and rising he restored our life. The cross of Christ, that terrible instrument of torture, is the divine remedy given us to heal all divisions and to bring about unity in a broken world. The objectivity of this has never been better expressed than in the great hymn by Fortunatus, Crux Fidelis, which we Latins sing in our liturgy on Good Friday:
Blood and water, double warrant,
Issue from his wounded side,
Washing in a mighty torrent
Earth and stars and oceantide.
The entire cosmos – everyone and everything within it – has been washed in the blood of Christ, that blood which represents God’s self-sacrificing love for all creation. In the Mystery of the Cross, God remade our broken world. It was his great act of cosmic reparation through which he reconciled all things to himself and among themselves – once, for all, and forever. Of course we need to keep asking why, if that is true, the world is such a broken place? Yet, as Christians, we must answer that we are saved in faith and hope (Rm.8:24).
Although we do not see it yet, we believe in faith that God has objectively restored the unity of all creation through the work of Christ. The unity Christ achieved by his cross and resurrection is a deeply mystical one. It is a hidden leaven, mysteriously at work at the heart of reality – and at the heart of very human being. But it becomes manifest whenever we allow love, mercy and forgiveness to triumph. That is our vocation as Christians, as co-workers with Christ: to help the objective redemption won by him to become real in our world.
Dear brothers and sisters, our deepest unity does not need to be created by us: it already exists unbreakably in Christ. It has been achieved for us by God, once and for all, through the death and resurrection of his Son. As Karl Barth once wrote, we do not create the unity of the Church, rather, we discover it! It already exists, though secretly, mystically. But we will discover it most fully only when we learn to stand together around the cross and contemplate the open side of Christ, the baptismal fountain out of which flows our everlasting redemption. For as the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council declared, echoing St. Augustine, out of the wounded side of the Savior on the cross, the wonderful sacrament of the whole Church poured forth in blood and water (c.f. Jn. 19:34).
When we Christians forget that Golgotha was the place of the Church’s birth, when we are content to contemplate ourselves, when we forget to look on the one who has been pierced (Jn. 19:37) – then, inevitably, our unity falls apart and we dissolve into irreconcilable differences. Life is sacrificed to ossified structures and sacrificial love to death-dealing definitions. But despite our failure to stay with him, where he was, (Jn.17:24) despite our failure to find our glory in the cross, the unity Christ achieved on Golgotha has never been dissolved. It never can and never will be - for it is grounded in God!
Let us return therefore to the original question posed by Paul, “Is Christ divided?” And let us proclaim again, “No, never!” not even in his earthly members. He is one and undivided - forever one and undivided!
He is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
One with us in our human nature,
One with the universe he has cleansed with his blood,
One with the Church, baptized by his death and resurrection!
Ecclesiastical divisions, the sad heritage of Christian history, remain painfully obvious to all. We must never cease to work and pray, to study and suffer, that mutual understanding may grow among us and communion be restored. But visible unity! That will come only in so far as we gather together around the primal font of unity - the Savior lifted high on the cross (Jn. 12:32). He is the divine magnet, drawing all things and everyone to himself, and into the heart of the Holy Trinity.
To God our Father, through the open side of Christ our Savior, in whom the already existing unity of Christians is waiting to be discovered: to him be the glory, now and forever, and to ages of ages!
Amen!