We are not called to be the Church’s jailers – Bishop Richard Clarke
The Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath & Kildare told the inter-church congregation in St Peter’s Cathedral, Belfast on Tuesday 18 January, “An ecumenism that is wholly safe is not ecumenism at all – it may be good manners but can be nothing more. We are all, in our own way and through our baptism, called to defend the Church of God. We are not, however, called to be the Church’s jailers.’
At the Belfast Cathedrals’ Partnership service marking the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2011, he said, ‘God’s grace is everywhere, but perhaps even more accessible to his disciples in the places of uncertainty and adventure than those familiar places of safety and security.’
‘As different Christian traditions, we cling on to our separate existences, believing that if we let anything go, the Kingdom of God will come crashing down. Actually it won’t. The Kingdom of God is not dependent on the strength of our padlocks. … Of course we cannot let go of what we see as truth, but we can let go of our obsession with survival as we now are. There could never have been the glory of Christ’s resurrection without the “letting go” of Good Friday. When our specific Christian tradition matters to us more than the Kingdom of God, we have lost touch with Christ himself.’
He later said, ‘…Hospitality means being prepared to be changed by our guests. It is not a good host who lays down rules for guests. It is not a good guest who abuses the hospitality of the host. There is nevertheless an ease of relationship that comes with familiarity. When we have good friends and when we become good friends, we know what irritates us about our friends and what irritates them about us. If they are really good friends, we are even able to discuss our differences openly without falling out. If we are not prepared to listen to those who are different, respectfully and with a willingness to be changed by what we hear, we are (whether we recognise it or not) living a life of abject fear.’
‘Part of what we must set our hearts and minds to, if we truly believe in the ecumenical adventure, is setting ourselves to listen to one another intently, rather than judgmentally. What we are talking about is an openness to the ideas of others that does not merely wish to correct them. In short, a willingness to be changed, perhaps radically, by what we are hearing … We must listen intelligently and attentively to views that seem alien and even less than acceptable to the preconceptions we cherish so carefully.’
In a sermon in St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Armagh on the following night, January 19, he called for greater ecumenical sharing in the celebration of Baptism, studying the Word of God and in pastoral care, both ordained and lay.
Extracts from Bishop Clarke’s address:
‘It is not advanced psychology to say that people will not willingly change – will not move – unless they are deeply and sincerely dissatisfied with where they are and there seems to be no alternative but to leave where they are. We have to ask the question on an evening like this as to whether we are satisfied with where we stand at present, as splintered traditions within the Body of Christ, whose witness to the country in which we live is undoubtedly being compromised and even demeaned by our disunity. If we are satisfied with where we are, then the basic integrity of an occasion such as this is most called into the most serious question.
‘…Virtually all the Christian traditions that have a sacramental tradition recognise the baptism of other traditions as being baptism into the One Body of Christ, and hence something which transcends the limitations of our own particular tradition of the Church … Would a statement of the deepest of all unity not be made if at the celebration of baptism in one particular tradition (in other words even on occasions where we were not speaking of parents belonging to different traditions), members of other Christian traditions were there by proper and official invitation to celebrate the event, representing the wider Church, so that the reality of the entire Body of Christ was symbolised in the celebration? It clearly could not be a feature of every baptism in every church building, but if we believe (as indeed we claim to believe in our creeds) in One Baptism, here is an opportunity to proclaim a unity that we already have in Christ.
‘We [should] make it a principle, so far as we can, that as Christians we will not study the Word of God in denominational isolation from one another, separate from members of other Christian traditions. No Christian tradition owns the Word of God, and no Christian tradition has a monopoly on the right interpretation of the Word of God. All of us are called to sit humbly under the judgment of the Word. Surely we are called to sit together under the Word of God. There are indeed bible study groups that are ecumenical in scope, but this should be the only type of group that studies the Scriptures in fellowship.
‘…There is another step that we should be able to take structurally as well as haphazardly … pastoral care of others in the name of Christ. …There is, I am sure, no priest or pastor of any tradition, who has not felt moved and humbled when asked directly to give a blessing to a Christian of another tradition, whether in a hospital ward or in a place of bereavement or even in a friend’s house. …[Can we ] take the simple step of committing pastoral care of some people to those of different Christian tradition that their own. It is not an anomaly when it happens. It should be both common sense and good ecumenism. The pastoral care of God’s people (and by that I mean all God’s people, both inside and outside the man-made walls of the institutional Church) should never be restricted in any way. It can certainly be made more effective.’
Bishop Clarke concluded, ‘…The only motivation, the only dynamic for our moving out into an ecumenical future that will be an adventure rather than a duty, is love, the love of God for each one of us and, in response to that perfect love, our true love for one another.’