As I’m sure you’ll have noticed that, during the Easter season, our usual cycle of Sunday readings changes in that, instead of an Old Testament reading, we have a reading from the Acts of the Apostles, and the reading after the psalm is always taken from the Book of Revelation. And there’s a very good reason for that. After Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension, his ministry and mission passed to the Church, to the Apostles initially, and so during the Easter season we read about the acts of the Apostles, what they did in the very early days of the Church. And we read from the Book of Revelation because this book contains revelations that were given to the book’s author, John, for the benefit of some of the early churches. As we read this morning,
“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches.”
And during the Easter season, we also move away from the Gospel of the year and read from John; readings that are very much concerned with Jesus’ teaching the disciples and through them, passing on that teaching to the Church.
And so, as our readings during the Easter season are so concerned with the Church, this morning I want to speak to you about the Church, and in particular, about something we profess to believe about the Church week by week in the Creed, and yet something that’s caused so much argument and division in the Church; our profession that we believe the Church to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
First of all, what do we mean when we say the Church is ‘one’? As we look at the Church, as it exists in the world, what we see is a Church that’s very far from one don’t we? I’m not sure of the latest figures but in the year 2000, it was reckoned that there were about 140 different denominations of the Church and, if all the independent groups and congregations were taken into account, perhaps as many as 34,000 different Churches in the world. Most of these divisions have come about because people in the Church have argued and fallen out with other people in the Church they once belonged to and so, either the Church has split into different denominations, such as happened between the Orthodox East and the Catholic West in the 11th Century, and at the Reformation during the 16th Century, or individual Christians have set up their own Churches, which is where the small, independent congregations come from. So how can the Church be one?
Well, we have to start by saying that there is only one Church, should only be one Church and can only be one Church because it’s Jesus Christ’s Church. He called the Church into being and he only called one Church into being. And, as we heard in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus intended the Church to be one, and prayed to the Father that it might be one.
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
And it’s clear from Jesus’ words in this morning’s Gospel that the source of this ‘oneness’, this unity, is love because his prayer to the Father continues,
“I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
So there is only one Church because Jesus only called one Church into being and the Church he called into being is founded on love. The Church Fathers, the Church leaders who came after the Apostles, believed division in the Church to be the worst of all sins because it is always caused by a failure of Christians to love one another. I think they were right. And so I think we can say that the Church is one where there is love between Christians and conversely, that where Christians fail to love one another, we step away from the one Church that Jesus called into being and that’s shown in the fractured, divided Church we see in the world.
But Jesus prayed that the love between Christians should be the same as the love between himself and the Father. So, in addition to loving one another, to be part of the one Church Jesus called into being we have to love God too. And that’s where the holiness of the Church comes in.
I’ve spoken before about holiness, and I’ve said that most people seem to equate holiness with moral or spiritual perfection, but that’s not what holiness is. Holiness is simply about dedication to God. So the Church is holy where it’s dedicated to God and that means where the Church’s people are dedicated to God.
The Church is holy where it’s people love God and live according to his commandments. We know that above all, we’re called to love one another and so we could sum up both the holiness, and the oneness, of the Church up by saying that the Church is both holy and one where the Church’s people follow the great commandment to love God with all their heart and soul and mind and to love their neighbour as themselves. And conversely, that where the Church’s people don’t love God, the Church falls from holiness and that’s most often shown in that failure of the Church’s people to love one another that leads to division and disunity; to a loss of oneness.
That brings us to what we mean by the catholic Church. This is perhaps the most controversial of all the four marks of the Church, as these things are known, in which we profess our belief in the Creed. We have to start by saying that nowhere in the New Testament is the Church described as catholic. So unlike the other marks of the Church, we can’t base our understanding of its catholicity directly on the Scriptures. What we have to do is to look at the earliest reference to the catholic Church to see what it meant then, and the earliest reference we have to the catholic Church is in the writings of St Ignatius of Antioch.
St Ignatius is thought to have been born in about 35AD, so shortly after the birth of the Church, and he was a convert to Christianity and possibly a disciple of the Apostle, St John. He’s thought to have succeeded St Peter as the bishop of Antioch and he was sent to Rome, where he was martyred around the year 107AD. On his way to Rome, Ignatius wrote a number of letters to various Churches he’d visited including one to the Church in Smyrna, in modern day Turkey. And in that letter we read this:
Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as where Jesus Christ is present, we have the catholic Church.
That doesn’t tell us very much about what Ignatius meant by the ‘catholic Church’ but if we read Ignatius’ letters as a whole, we find that, for Ignatius, the catholic Church, the Church where Jesus Christ is present, had a three-fold order of bishops, presbyters and deacons; that it included all Christian communities under episcopal oversight, that is, all communities who recognised the authority of their bishop; that it celebrated the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, and Ignatius denounces in the strongest terms all those who deny that the bread and wine of the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ;
that it adhered to orthodox teaching and faith, that it practiced charity, in other words, it’s people loved one another, and that it adhered to the Scriptures, though at this time we’re not certain just what the Christian Scriptures were. I’m sure many of you will have heard that the word ‘catholic’ means ‘universal’ but more accurately it means something like ‘in general’ or ‘according to the whole’ So what Ignatius seems to mean by the ‘catholic Church’, the Church where Jesus Christ is present which, I think by definition must also be the one, holy Church, is the Church that’s made up of all those Christian communities who believe in and adhere to, all these things that the Church as a whole, holds sacred, believes in and practices. Which is a very different understanding to the one held by those who say that, because the word ‘catholic’ means universal’, anyone who claims to be part of the one, holy, catholic Church does, regardless of what they believe and do.
Finally we come to the fourth mark of the Church, the apostolic Church. Again, this is something we don’t find in the New Testament. And, yet again, the first reference to the apostolic Church is something we find in the letters of St Ignatius of Antioch, this time in his Letter to the Church at Tralles, another Church that was in modern day Turkey, in which Ignatius writes,
In apostolic fashion, I send the church my greeting in all the fullness of God, and wish her every happiness.
The term apostolic is hardly ever used, anywhere, in anything other than a Christian context and so it’s something that is very much a Christian idea. And in Ignatius’ and in early Christian writings generally, it has one of two meanings; it can either mean ‘like the Apostles’ or ‘directly linked to the Apostles’. So the apostolic Church is the Church that, through its beliefs and practices, is in continuity with the Church of the Apostles, the one, holy, catholic Church that Jesus called into being.
Now, whilst we don’t find this in Scripture, we have to take what the Church Fathers say very seriously because people like Ignatius of Antioch were the second generation of Christians and Church leaders; they were taught by the Apostles themselves and so we have to assume that what they wrote, especially in these very early days of the Church, was what they were told by those who were taught by Jesus himself.
Unfortunately, the idea of apostolicity has become another source of disagreement and division in the Church because it’s become bogged down in arguments about the ‘Apostolic Succession’, the idea that the apostolic Church is one in which the bishops can trace a direct line of succession back to the Apostles. But apostolicity is a much broader and deeper concept than simply that. It’s about the faith and the whole life of the Church and its people. The apostolic Church is the Church that believes and does what the Apostles believed and did. And so, a Church that doesn’t believe what the Apostles believed and doesn’t do what the Apostles did, can’t be an apostolic Church.
If we think about these marks of the Church seriously, it’s not too hard to see that they’re complimentary and that we can’t really have any of them if we don’t have all of them. If we want to be part of the one Church that Jesus called into being we have to love one another. We will love one another if we’re dedicated to God and to obeying that great commandment to love him and love our neighbour as ourselves. Then we’ll be part of the holy Church. If we love God and each other, we’ll be far less likely to be the cause of or even part of that greatest of all sins, division and disunity in the Church; we’ll be able to remain in the main part of the Body of Christ which is the catholic Church. And if we can be like the Apostles, holding to the faith they received from Jesus and following the example they received from Jesus and passed on to those who came after them, we’ll be part of the apostolic Church.
In the Creed, Sunday by Sunday, we say we believe that the Church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. This is what it means to say that; it only remains to live it out.
Amen.
The Propers for the 7th Sunday of Easter can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 