July 12, 2006
Unity
It is not uncommon for people to wonder whether prayer is ever answered. Actually, I suspect that Jesus is one of them. When he asked God that we be one as he and God are one, that strikes me as a prayer that, a couple of thousand years later and since it’s more or less up to us, he’s wondering will ever be answered [Jn 17].
We do sometimes get around to talking about it. Unity, we call it, and its a prime subject these days in the midst of all this current Anglican foolishness. Foolishness, mostly because Anglicanism’s the last place anybody ought to start looking for unity. Just the fact that some undertake such a search and act like such a thing is possible should be evidence aplenty right off they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. Old Queen Elizabeth settled that a while ago, and there wasn’t a lot of unity in how she settled it. Actually, when you come to think about it, it was a moderate — albeit a bit tense — kind of inclusiveness. And it’s inclusiveness which, as we say out west, is more like “the cowboy way.”
Some still insist on something they call “Anglican orthodoxy,” which is about as foolish an oxymoronic combination of words as one could ever imagine. And then they turn to the Lambeth Conferences and lately the Windsor Report to back up the claim, when neither of these even approaches Holy Writ no matter how hard some try to drag them kicking and screaming, as they say.
We’ve got already in the 1979 BCP a reasonably useful combination of gospel notions in what we call the Baptismal Covenant around which we can gather theologically I should think without too much difficulty. I realize I beat that horse a bit much for OoN’s readers, but I can’t come up with anything better and would be a fool to try.
Frankly, I suspect God would be rather pleased with a life that tried to keep between the apostolic curbs more often than not, asked forgiveness rather than permission when jumping them, set some examples in the interest of the Good News now and then, found and served his son in others, and gave justice and peace a nod from time to time. Even God, we claim, rather seemed to prefer unity as one in three and I don’t imagine ever expects us to get that close.