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| Sunday, 22 January 2006 |
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Christian Unity Week : Christians of goodwill to pray together on Jan. 23 by Dr. N. Francis Wickremesinghe This year the Christians in the National Christian Council of Sri Lanka and in the Roman Catholic Church will worship and pray together on January 23, at St. Anne's Church, Wattala at 6.00 p.m. This is part of the Unity Week Celebrations which is done annually from January 18-25, as proposed in 1908 by Paul Watson to cover the days between the Feasts of St. Peter (18) and of St. Paul (25). This is symbolic because St. Peter was selected by Jesus to be the 'rock' or leader of the apostles and St. Paul was the apostle to the non Jews and who opposed Peter to the face but yet retained the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3). Unity Week thus celebrates unity in diversity, not uniformity. The reason Unity Week is celebrated in response to the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ, who on the Thursday before death and rising again said: "That they may all be one. as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me". (John 17:21) For this reason Christians the world over pray for unity and light, and light a unity lamp/candle on the Thursdays. This year the Council for promoting christian Unity (Roman Catholic) and the World Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order (Protestant) have jointly proposed a joint prayer service and a common theme for study. "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them" (Matthew 18:18-20). This is to encourage the coming together in love, prayer and Bible study by '2 or 3' in the name of Jesus - as the apostles did with Mary the mother of Jesus (Acts 1:14) when they received the grace of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the good news to all nations on the birthday of the Church at Pentecost (50 days after Jesus' rising again to life). Divisions Even with persecution and laws against the early Christians, Christianity spread far and wide. From the beginning the Church was an international casteless and classless society, without losing the national characteristics of its members and incorporating national customs and local peculiarities in its worship of God. But with the expansion of the Church, national tensions and social rivalries caused a crack in the unity in diversity of the Church fabric. The first major split occurred in the 4th Century in North Africa, called the Donatist schism, resulting in the Christian Church vanishing altogether in that region by the 7th Century. In the 5th Century similar conflicts occurred in Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia with the formation of the Oriental Orthodox Churches in those countries. It is this Persian Nestorian Church that came to India and Sri Lanka in the 7-8th Centuries and their cross with eastern motifs reliefed in stone can be seen in the Anuradhapura museum. Interestingly, each end of this cross has trefoil petals of a flower, representing the three personalities of the One God, and is placed in an open lotus symbolizing Jesus' empty tomb and pure religion in Asia. Similar stone reliefed Persian crosses have been found in 5 other places in Southern India. A very serious split occurred on July 16, 1054 when the Papal Legate excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius which broke the Church into Eastern and Western Christendom. The next major split took place in several countries in Europe at the 16th Century Reformation after Martin Luther posted theses on the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church on October 31, 1517 on the Church door in Wittenburg, Germany. The Western Church thus broke asunder into the Protestant national Churches and the supra national Roman Catholic Church. During the 20th Century a large number of evangelical Churches have been formed throughout the world. Re-integration The International Missionary Conference held in Ediborough, U.K., in 1910, the Anglican Lambeth Conference of Bishops in 1920 and the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch in 1920, appealed to all Christians of goodwill to seek the Biblical position of unity in mission. This led to the formation of the World Council of Church (WCC) in 1948 - a federation of most Christian Churches from all nations, except the roman Catholic Church and some pentecostal Churches. Through the National Christian Council (NCC) of Sri Lanka (formed in 1914), its member Churches - Anglicans, Methodists, baptists, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Presbyterians, the Salvation Army and the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India are members of the WCC. Since Christianity came to the colonies in a divided state for which the national Christians were not responsible nor desired to perpetuate, several Churches in South India came together in 1947 as the Church of South India. They were followed in 1970 with the formation of the united Church of North India. In Sri Lanka unity was prevented by civil litigation, but the mainline Protestant Churches had voted overwhelmingly to overwhelmingly to form a united, national Church and have even covenanted publicly before God in 1972 to form a united Church on the basis of the Scheme of Church Union in Ceylon (1963). Today all these NCC Churches use the same Bible Readings on Sundays. In 1960 Pope John XXIII opened the windows of the Roman Catholic Church to ecumenism. At the opening of the 2nd Vatican Council, he had the observers from the Protestant and Orthodox Churches seated closest to him, among them Bishop Harold De Soysa, the Anglican Bishop of Colombo. Since then the Roman Catholic Church has had official dialogue with the mainline Protestant Churches on theological issues at an international level and agreed statements on contentious issues have been published, the most recent being with the Anglican on 'Mary - Grace and Hope in Christ'. Meanwhile official theological agreed statements have been published between the Protestant Churches at an international level. Conclusion It is to grow together in unity that Unity Week is celebrated each year. All Christians of goodwill - Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical are all invited to worship the One God together at St. Anne's Church, Wattala, on Monday January 23 at 6.00 p.m., and at parish levels to study the Bible statement in Mathew 18:18-20. Hope for unity in diversity lives on in the hearts of the ordinary Christians in the pews. As the Dutch inscription in stone in Galle says, Spes est, Regerminat (Hope lives on, springing up again - Job 14:7). |
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