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Unity Sunday - 2007
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 21st January 2007
Revd. Matthew Vernon
Normally we would have a visiting preacher today, for Unity Sunday –
• a preacher from a different church.
At the Cathedral, Metropolitan Nikitas of the Greek Orthodox Church is preaching this morning.
Last year, John Lemond from the Lutheran Church preached for us at Emmanuel.
This year we have a different kind of ecumenical partner:
• Bethanie.
This year our ecumenical partner is this Roman Catholic chapel.
As you know, Bethanie was built be the Mission Etrangeres in 1875.
We'll hear more about that next Sunday from Alain Le Pichon.
Alain is going to speak about his book on the history of Bethanie.
The Mission is a Roman Catholic order.
In the 19th Century they had many priests in Asia
• and Bethanie was built as a sanatorium for priests who were sick.
This chapel represents that Roman Catholic tradition.
You can see it in the building.
In the stained glass: Jesus with a sacred heart.
In the original altar: the place for the tabernacle were they kept the blessed sacrament.
Also, the place for the altar stone.
In wooden altars, there's a tradition of having stone were the Eucharist takes place.
Then there's the side chapels.
Originally each of the alcoves had an altar.
They were used by the priests to say Mass.
Now we have flat screens in the alcoves.
• which says something about our priorities!
Those features of the chapel represent the priests' Roman Catholic tradition.
Some of us have a Roman Catholic background.
That is good.
Some of us have a Protestant background.
That is good.
Our church background is a kind of culture.
• Like our national culture or family culture.
For some of us being here is a bit like being in a different culture.
The features in this chapel are cultural expressions.
We can learn from them if we let them speak to us.
You know the one about the children in the Catholic school.
Their teacher, Sister Angelica asked the children what they wanted to be when they grew up.
Tommy said he wanted to be a pilot.
Rachel said she wanted to be a doctor.
Michael proudly, and piously, said he wanted to be a priest.
Then Mary stood up and declared she wanted to be a prostitute.
Sister Angelica was shocked. "What did you say?"
Mary repeated, "I shall become a prostitute."
Mary was immediately taken away from the other children.
She was sent to see the priest, Father Joseph.
"Now tell me, Mary, what happened," he said.
"Well, Father. Sister asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up and I said I wanted to be a prostitute."
"Did you say prostitute?" Father Joseph asked. "What a relief. We thought you said Protestant!"
This Unity Sunday is not about all Christians having exactly the same beliefs.
It's not about all Christians practicing their faith the same way.
It's not about all Christians belonging to one universal denomination.
There have been efforts to bring that about.
Some Christians have had the goal of a united Church.
But it's an impossible dream.
The history of Christianity show us that.
But more deeply, I don't believe it's what God wants.
God doesn't want unity, in the sense of sameness.
God loves diversity.
You just have to look at the world around us.
Let's start with nature.
Creation has unimaginable diversity.
The range of animals and plants and birds and insects and marine life is incredible and unimaginable.
The Census of Marine life is a ten-year project involving researchers around the world.
They have discovered 500 previously unknown species.
Including a shrimp that survives alongside volcanic vents that spew out water at 400C.
Scientists estimate that 90% of marine life is undocumented yet.
Scientists also estimate that 90% of species that have existed are extinct.
Diversity, variety, multiplicity.
Let's focus again on us humans and our Christian beliefs.
We find great diversity.
Diversity which God favours.
The story of the Tower of Babel teaches us.
It's a wonderful myth containing important truth.
It comes from a time in human history when humans started to build cities.
In Babylon, the great ziggurat or temple-tower in the city was a place to encounter the divine.
The story of Babel says the whole earth had one language.
People come together on a plain in the land of Shinar –
• that's a flat area, not a flying machine… we're talking thousands of years ago!
And they decide to make a tower "with its top in the heavens".
In their hubris, the people believe they can become gods.
God sees the tower and doesn't like it.
"This is only the beginning of what they will do."
And God confuses their languages and they abandon their mega city.
It's a wonderful myth to explain the many languages of the world.
According to Babel, diversity reminds us that we are not God.
Christians often argue about what they believe.
Some believe one doctrine, some another.
One group strives to convince other groups that it alone possesses the truth.
Yet God alone possesses the truth, because God alone is truth.
On earth we see only glimpses, hints; our knowledge of truth is partial.
So we can say the different groups who argue are all right and all wrong:
• right in seeing one part of the truth;
• wrong in claiming the whole
There is a difference between God and religion.
God is universal.
Different denominations are particular.
Religion is a translation of God into a particular language and culture.
Our unity comes from God.
We are the same.
We are all children of God.
We are all human and infinitely loved by God.
But at the same time we are different.
Each of us comes from a particular culture,
• are part of a particular history,
• have a particular skin tone.
God no more wants all Christians to be the same than a loving parent wants their children to be the same.
God takes particularity seriously.
The birth of Jesus teaches us that.
Jesus was born in a particular place, in a particular race, in a particular religion.
But Christ is universal.
His teaching and example are true for everyone,
• no matter their race or place of birth.
We see that in Christians from South America to India; the Middle East to South Africa.
But their Christianity doesn't remove their particular culture and history.
OK so much for the theory.
What does it mean for our daily lives?
We're all familiar with the command to "love your neighbour as yourself."
Also in the Bible is the command to "love the stranger".
It comes 36 times: love the stranger;
• love the one who is different.
This goes against so many of our instincts,
• but we encounter God in the stranger.
We so quickly are suspicious of people who are different,
• people who don't come from where we come from,
• people who believe differently to what we believe.
We so quickly criticize, mock, even condemn.
We so quickly treat people as less than us, less than human.
But God creates difference, therefore we meet God in the one-who-is-different.
Abraham meets God when he invites three strangers into his tent.
Ruth is a Moabite, not Jewish, yet she finds favour with Boaz and they marry.
Ruth says "why should you take notice of me a foreigner/a stranger?"
Ruth and Boaz are the great grandparents of King David.
Jesus takes a drink at the well from the Samaritan women – a stranger;
• even though "Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans".
The supreme religious challenge is to see God's image in one who is not in our image.
Perhaps you know the words of a Celtic Rune of Hospitality:
We saw a stranger yesterday.
We put food in the eating place,
drink in the drinking place,
music in the listening place,
and with the sacred name of the triune God he blessed us and our house,
our cattle and our dear ones.
As the last says in the song:
Often, often, often, goes the Christ in the stranger's guise.
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