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Healing wounded memories is an essential feature of the search for Christian unity, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia told participants at a public seminar in Dublin, Ireland on Monday 30 April. A day earlier, in a sermon preached in Edinburgh, Scotland, he affirmed that churches are recognizing that "without each other, none of them is being fully church".
Having just been through the most violent century in human history, humanity is entering the third millennium with lots of wounded memories. That is why, Kobia explained, "Christian unity will become meaningful both to Christians and non-Christians alike if the church takes the lead in healing and reconciling memories".
Speaking at the Irish School of Ecumenics, the WCC general secretary proposed a model of reconciliation that is "not cheap" but entails "an attitude of repentance and a will for reparation". Kobia affirmed that churches "are also called to initiate and promote acts of forgiveness in each place and in all places," for it is forgiveness that creates "the possibility of starting afresh and beginning something new".
To avoid the "inherent danger" that reconciliation be "trivialized and stripped of its fundamental value," churches need to deal with it as both "a theological and a social category". This "integrated approach" must take into account both the biblical understanding of reconciliation and forgiveness and the "sometimes too complex" nature of today's conflicts.
There is no monopoly on Christ's presence
"One key to the search for unity is the discovery that Christ is present in each believer... and in each church," the WCC general secretary told worshippers at Edinburgh's Livingston Ecumenical Parish, the oldest ecumenical parish in Scotland, on Sunday, 29 April. "This awareness is the starting point for the whole ecumenical movement!" he proclaimed.
In spite of the unity that all Christians have in Christ - a unity "from which we cannot escape" - the church "has become divided into a myriad separate churches". According to Kobia, while many of the differences "enrich the body of Christ", others are "destructive divisions".
This is the case when churches "do not recognize baptisms performed by others"; when they "compete in launching mission programmes" or "duplicate programmes and work of all sorts"; and most notoriously, when their members "cannot share the eucharist with one another".
While divisions "contradict the nature of the church itself as the one body of Christ," churches are called to recognize that "no church has a monopoly on Christ's presence and power," Kobia declared. And shared some examples of churches who are recognizing that "without each other, none of them is being fully church".
We belong to each other
Kobia returned to the theme of reconciliation and collaboration between churches in a meditation during worship at Edgehill Theological College in Belfast, Ireland, on 1 May.
Recalling the response to the tsunami that hit Asia and parts of Africa in December 2004, he highlighted that "churches in the affected countries were among the first to move in to care for the people in partnership with people of other faiths". Churches abroad "ready to support efforts at rehabilitation and reconstruction" joined them, he reported.
"The message was loud and clear: If one member suffers, all suffer together with it'," Kobia said, quoting the apostle Paul's words. "At all times, not just in times of such a tragedy, we need to recognise that we belong to each other," he added.
The WCC general secretary is halfway through a 24 April - 4 May visit to the UK and Ireland.
More information on Kobia's visit to England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, including a detailed schedule, is available on the WCC website at:
www2.wcc-coe.org/pressreleasesen.nsf/index/pr-07-25.html
Media contacts in
The UK:
Bob Fyffe (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, general secretary) +44-(0)794-066-0099 [email protected]
Republic of Ireland:
Gillian Kingston (Irish Council of Churches, president) +353-(0)87-235-0287 [email protected]