A Different Incantation

A lot has been said, and argued, and wrestled with, regarding the unity of the Church. If you were to merely cast your eye over the Nicene Creed, you would be impressed with a sense of deep and inadvertently cohesive poetry. "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, of all thing Visible and Invisible... And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds: Light of Light, Very God of Very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father... And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the Prophets..."



Whether they meant it to be lyrical or not, I don't know; perhaps it is merely my vivid and emotional imagination that conjures up this feeling of a bound whole when I read these words. Perhaps it is that: perhaps it is merely emotional. I had the misfortune of casting my eye just today over an article in the newspaper which started off unabashedly by talking about how the author of the article knew what both what the congregants and the men in the pulpit felt when the church was rocked with schisms created by immorality. I stared. He said it with such frankness, brushing over the fact of wickedness to garner the sympathy of the readers. He took the wickedness for granted. I was almost doubtful for a moment if he thought the wickedness really was wicked. But the disunity is a sad fact, and lust, his example in use, is not the only problem to break up congregations: the other six deadly sins have clawed happily through many a gathering before. So perhaps the lyrical script of that ancient creed really does produce nothing more than an emotional and unfounded reaction in me. Division, it seems, is inevitable.



To what shall we liken the Kingdom of Heaven? It is like a man who had two sons... The creed takes a man back to what is believed: of God, of man, of life, of death. The creed is that script written down by the hand of a man from the heart of a man, telling the world what he knows in his heart is true. But there is another step back to take, an inscription that predates the Deep Magic, written by another hand by another heart on another wall. It is an inscription that can affirm or deny with authority every "I believe" that man has ever or will ever or can ever write.



...we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose...



For some time now a portion of my own congregation has been studying the many "one anothers" of Scripture. "Be of kindly affection to one another, be of the same mind as one another, love one another, receive one another, admonish, salute - so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members of one another." We have raged long and studiously over these words, and many more like them, but the simple truth is that only two words in that brokenly quoted passage are important. They are, quite frankly, the cornerstone on which all the others rest.



in Christ



You may believe in the creeds of the Church written down in the blood of the martyrs. You may hold fast to sound doctrine, abstaining from evil, walking in righteousness, and all this is merely the right conduct of a servant of God. But the heart of man is desperately wicked, and in the heart of man even good conduct can cause schism and division, breeding such hateful terms as "carnal Christians" and "holier-than-thou." Whence unity? In Christ - in Christ. Listen to those words: they ring through Scripture. This takes the concept of Equality by the Divine to a whole new level of existence. It is not by man that man is made at one with God and man and creation - it is by the God-Man Jesus Christ. There in the physical body of Christ, in the breath that goes in and out of those physical lungs by which a man receives the Spirit of God, there is the firstfruits of unity. By decree, not by fiat, but by legal decree, a man is inscribed in the Book of Life - which is to say, in Christ.



It is by adoption, not merely by creed, that a man enters the Kingdom of Heaven. Not all who say "Lord! Lord!" will enter. Oh, we love our neighbour...but what of keeping our brother? With a kind of fierce and laughing glory the Word spelled out the answer to that question all across a nation's history and signed it with a bloody flourish. In cultures older than our own (in cultures within our own) family meant something. These cultures did not spend long evenings discussing what it means to keep one another (though we are stupid, and must be reminded from time to time): you stuck to family, you looked out for family, family was everything to you: one of the worst sins a man could commit was to become a "kinslayer," a murderer of his own blood people. And this tie was not by virtue of anyone's personality or creed (though, naturally, these play a part in families) but by the simple virtue of being of the same family.



"We...are one body in Christ, and every one members of one another." After all our talks about unity and all our struggles to make believers act like believers, what does it boil so restfully down to? Adoption. The irreducible minimum of the Body of Christ is the legal act of adoption. Within any family, despite the endearing moments that are bound to occur, it is generally understood that, until a certain age, children are not very helpful and often troublesome. I have a young niece and nephew. I know this. But I understand, and most people usually understand too, that usefulness (or lack thereof) is not what makes an individual a family member. If he is born in the family, he is part of the family. Just so with the Church, a person's membership is not determined by how competent or useful he may be (although these aspects are important) but by whether or not Christ's legal, and rather gory, act of adoption has his name written on it. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God who justifieth." It seems almost escapist, but - Good Lord! - it isn't, and that's the beauty of it. This is the foundation on which unity itself is built, and the acknowledgment of this irreducible minimum forces the competent creedsman to suffer with charity the incompetence of other believers, and urges the incompetent on to greater solidarity of spirit.



On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.