Bearing Christ to one another
The Rector writes of
being enriched by different strands of Christian experience
In the sixth century, as western Europe was beginning to fragment into what we call
the “Dark Ages”, and as communities were beginning to become more
inward-looking, fearful and suspicious of the stranger, a young layman called
Benedict wrote his “Rule” for monastic communities. Part of this Rule is about the community receiving
guests - although human communities were becoming fragmented, closed,
suspicious, the spiritual community was to be the exact opposite and welcome
the stranger, the other, the one who was different.
The Rule of Benedict says this: A
guest should be welcomed as though they were Christ himself – for he said, “I
was a stranger and you took me in” The implication is that the stranger, the other,
the one who is not of your type may be to you a minister of Christ, a sign and
vessel of the presence of God.
Behind those words from the Rule lie
the words of Jesus in Matthew 25 where he tells the disciples that when they receive
the stranger, visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, then they do
it for him. Even more directly Jesus on the night of his betrayal says
this to the little band of disciples: “Whoever
accepts anyone I send accepts me, and whoever accepts me accepts
the one who sent me” (John
What does that mean for us ? As a Christian
I need the “Other”, the believer who is different from me, in order to grow in
knowledge and understanding of Christ. I need their experience and what the
Lord may say to me through it to enrich me on my journey. The "Other" can be God’s blessing to
me when I truly receive them, listen to their experience, let down my barriers
of suspicion and pride, and then find that I have met with Christ in a new way. The
Christian way is inescapably corporate, the way of a differing and varied community
where each may be a bearer of Christ to the other.
Within the life of the Church I need
the different "strands" of Christian experience.
I need the "Catholic" strand, the richness of
symbolic and sacramental life, and the recognition that the Christian past,
"tradition", can be a source of spiritual wisdom and insight.
I need the "Evangelical" strand with its
passion for the scriptures, its willingness to sit under the Word of God there,
and its stress on proclamation, personal conversion and making of disciples.
I need the "Charismatic" and "Pentecostal" strand, to open my heart and mind to the gifts
and graces and empowerment of the Holy Spirit, so that I am not, as the theologian
Karl Barth once warned, “a flat-tyre Christian”, bumping along the pilgrim way on the hard
shoulder.
I need the intimate, contemplative, more Quakerly,
strand (though it is there also in Catholic Christianity) to teach me to sit
still, to be quiet, to wait upon God and his still small voice, and to let him
not me write the agenda.
I also need the "Liberal" Christian’s open-ness to
the world, to culture and science and contemporary thought, so that I am indeed
presenting the Gospel as the answer to the questions people are really asking,
rather than what I would like to think they are asking.
All those strands can and should and
often do enrich me, but I can never think that I know and have it all. The Lord
has so much to teach me in the wider community of faith through the other who
is so different, yet still so blessed by him.
Woe betide me if I shut him out because I have shut
my fellow believer out.
We are lucky in the Churches of this
Parish that we have people of many different Christian experiences and insights.
We are not a Parish of one "churchmanship" or "party" . The challenge is whether we are each willing to move on from co-existing
together towards being able to receive from one another. I dare to say that the
Anglican Communion needs to re-learn that truth as well. In receiving each other, really receiving each
other, we receive Christ. When we
are growing in him, then our faith and our life together will be attractive to
the seeker and stranger, and they too will meet him.
Roger Clarke
August 2008