It was my privilege to be a teacher this year in the St. Michael’s Conference, a theological summer school for young people age 14 through 21. Part of the program is a faculty talk after Evensong on some basic doctrine of the Christian faith.
This year the talks were based on phrases from the Apostles’ Creed. I was assigned “The Holy Catholic Church.” The students are keen and come hungry for real theology. They are also teenagers at the end of a long day and entirely ready, along with the priest-teachers and adult counselors, for the supper that will be theirs on the other side of the talk. The challenge is to say something simple and succinct and worthy of the profundity of the topic.
As I prepared my remarks, the divisions of the church were very much on my heart. In the conference were Episcopalians, members of the Anglican Church of North America and Anglicans-turned-Roman Catholics. How to witness to the oneness of the church when the divisions of the churches are pressing in upon us in such an undeniable way? Here is my effort to witness to what the creed confesses while facing into the reality of the Church as we find it.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Church. What kind of church? One holy catholic and apostolic. The English word church is a translation of a Greek word, ekklesia, which is a translation of the Hebrew word qahal. God calls the Hebrew people to himself, calls them out of the world and sets them apart, consecrates them to be holy people, to be an instrument of his saving purposes for the sake of all people, to be a light to the Gentiles, to so live toward God and toward each other that people who do not know God will say to the qahal, the ekklesia, the assembly God has called out, “Surely you must know God. Tell us about him, so that we might also know and love and serve him and receive his blessing.” The oneness, the unity of the Church both then and now, is found in the one, true, and living God’’s call, first to them and now to us, to hear his voice and to know, love, worship, and serve him.
In the Bible, when God’s people lose their grip on the call, when they lose their grip on the mission God has given them, they fall into disunity. God sends his prophets to recall them to unity with him and unity in the mission he has given them to bring his light and life to the world. In the fullness of time, the Father sends his light and life in the person of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son.
You and I have heard the voice of the Good Shepherd calling our name. We have answered the call and have unity with God and each other in and through him. The one Church is the assembly of those who have been called out and set apart by the Father through the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit to be a holy people, zealous for good works, as the letter to Titus reminds us, and as we hear each Christmas Eve. The one Church is the congregation, the assembly of all those living and dead who have heard the call of God in Jesus Christ and responded with faith and baptism. There’s one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.
We have heard the call of the Father through the Son, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we have become part of him and he of us—so much a part that St. Paul tells us, “you are the body of Christ and each one of you are individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27). The oneness of the Church is his life in us and our life in him. The church is one because he and the Father and the Spirit are one, and we are one in and through him.
The Church is holy in two senses. Holy means set apart for a sacred purpose. And we are holy, not because we are without sin or perfect, but because God in his mysterious love and grace has called us out and set us apart to bring him to people and people to him. The Church is also holy because, despite our sins and frailties, forgiven by Jesus and being worked on and assisted by the Holy Spirit, we are called to conform ourselves more and more to Jesus and to have formed in us his heart for God and his heart for his brothers and sisters.
The Church is catholic. Catholic is a word that means whole and universal. A particular congregation is the emergence, the manifestation, in a particular place of the one holy and catholic church.
The Catholic faith is that which has always and everywhere been believed by all. It is summarized in the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds. It is faithfulness to the teaching of Jesus, which we have through the Apostles in the Scriptures. St. Paul says, “I hand on to you that which I have received” (1 Cor. 15:3). The Church is apostolic because it preserves the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles. It is especially the office of the bishop, assisted by priests and deacons, to preserve the Apostles’ teaching and hand this life-giving teaching on to the faithful without change. The Scripture warns against those who teach human ideas as thought they were the doctrines of the faith God has given us through the Apostles and their followers. Those of us who are clergy are under the most weighty obligation to hand on the teaching of the Apostles.
What about the divisions in the Church? How can there be one holy catholic and apostolic Church when there are so many divisions, so many churches? Where is the true Church?
This is a big topic and much could be said. Tonight, I will say this. The divisions are evidence that we have lost, to some degree, our grip on Jesus Christ. St. Paul tells us, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). This is true of us individually and corporately in our divided churches. Our divisions are evidence that we have, to some degree, lost our grip on Jesus.
But he has not lost his grip on us and will surely fulfill his promise that “wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20). What he says to his disciples just before the Ascension, he says to us: “I will not leave you as orphans, but will send the Holy Spirit” (John 14:18). The Holy Spirit, St. John tells us, will cause us to confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and build up the Church in love.
The Very Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding, dean of the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, is entering his fourth decade as a priest of the Episcopal Church.
