The
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
Church Council of Greater Seattle-Seattle University School of Theology and
Ministry
January 24, 2011
First AME Church
I have often
wished that I could profess my faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ with
the same bold and unqualified assurance as St. Paul. The entire 15th
chapter of First Corinthians, of which this evening’s verses were but a small,
if culminating, part, is St. Paul’s great profession of faith in the
Resurrection, his manifesto, if you will. For Paul, everything –
everything! – rose or fell on the reality of the resurrection. If it
didn’t happen, our faith was nonsense; but since it did, our faith is both
grounded and guaranteed. Simple as that, and profound as that.
Paul was
faithful and fearless in preaching that gospel -- that bedrock belief that was
alive in the Church thanks to the testimony of eye witnesses, including himself
whom he acknowledged to be “the last and the least.” So unwavering was Paul’s
faith in the resurrection that he could with holy defiance throw out those two
questions which were for him rhetorical but are anything but rhetorical for us,
“Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Over the
years, when the sting of death has come very close to me -- too close for
comfort and too close to be comforted – I have found myself clinging to my faith
in the resurrection, yes, but wondering mightily all the same. Oh for the
unflinching faith of St. Paul!
Friends, it seems altogether fitting that, at this ecumenical prayer service
in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we anchor our reflections in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not only is the resurrection the foundation
of our faith and the reason for our hope, it is also the bond that binds us
together as brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus, brothers and sisters in his
Body, the Church. For it is into his saving death and resurrection that we
have been baptized.
Now, to be
honest with you, when I was a much younger person, I did not think this way.
I’m a ‘cradle Catholic,’ raised in what Roman Catholics commonly call the
pre-Vatican II Church. And the pre-Vatican II Church not only preached a
whole lot more about the crucifixion and death of Jesus than about his
resurrection, it also preached that message in churches whose doors were
closed tightly – even locked – when it came to other Christian denominations.
I know we were not unique in that regard, but I can only speak about us, and I
know just how high the walls were and, sad to say, how great the
misunderstandings, the misjudgements and even the hostilities.
Since this
year of 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, I thought
I would let that watershed event in the history of the Church – and the tsunami
of grace it triggered -- give focus to the thoughts I’d like to share with you.
It’s worth
remembering that it was during Church Unity Week of 1959 that Pope John XXIII,
or “good Pope John,” as people came to call him, announced his intention to call
a general Council of the Church. And when he did, he made it clear that he
wanted the Council to be for what he called “the whole Church.” That was a
new note. Pope John was convinced that a Council could be “for the
spiritual good and joy of all Christian people if the divided Christian
Communities were to seek unity together.” To make this happen, he took
what were in those days, some fairly remarkable steps for the Roman Catholic
Church which had long been locked up in its fortress, sealed in its ghetto.
He invited the Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox Churches to send official
observers to the Council, and he chose to seat them in places of honor in St.
Peter’s Basilica directly across from the College of Cardinals. He also
established the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity to be at the service
of the observers, gave it equal standing with the other commissions of the
Council, and appointed as its secretary a prominent cardinal and
highly-respected Jesuit biblical scholar, Augustin Bea. He also made it
clear at that time that it was his strong conviction that the first task of the
Roman Catholic Church at that moment was to renew itself.
As with
other parts of the Council’s agenda, the ecumenical agenda unfolded and
developed in anything but linear fashion. There were roadblocks and
detours at nearly every step along the way – including the death, shortly after
the first session of the Council, of Pope John himself, but his successor, Pope
Paul VI, quickly embraced the Council and made it clear that its ecumenical
agenda was a high priority for him, too. In December of 1964, Pope Paul VI
formally adopted and proclaimed the Decree on Ecumenism after it had received
the overwhelming support of the bishops of the Catholic world (well over 2,000
voted in favor and only 64 against). I was a young seminary student in
Rome on that December day and I will remember as long as I live the thrill of
being in St. Peter’s Basilica at that moment. It was a new day in the
Roman Catholic Church and, I dare say, a new day in the entire Christian Church.
It was
also a new day for this young fellow from Seattle who grew up in an Irish
Catholic family that considered itself, when it came to religious faith, quite
self-sufficient. My family didn’t look askance at other denominations or
religions, it just didn’t look at all! So I can say without hesitation that the
Council’s teaching on ecumenism opened my eyes and, thanks to some fine mentors
in ministry, opened my heart. I want to say a word about each of those mentors.
They were three.
The first
was a man you’ve likely never heard of: Father Thomas Pitsch, the pastor of St.
Patrick’s Church in Tacoma and the first pastor to whom I was assigned as a
young, inexperienced assistant pastor when I returned from my studies in Rome in
the summer of 1967. I will always think of Father Pitsch as a “Vatican II
priest” before Vatican II ever happened. By that, I mean, he always put
people first (ahead of laws and rules), and he was radically open to all
sorts of people as well as to other points of view. After Vatican II, he
brought boundless energy, intelligence, and enthusiasm to his ministry as he
became very involved with the other Christian churches of greater Tacoma and
invited me to do the same. It was through him that I came to get some idea
about what ecumenical dialogue meant, and it was alongside him that I sat –
sometimes awkwardly, sometimes comfortably -- in people’s homes, Protestant and
Catholic, to engage in what we called in those days, “living room dialogues.”
For me, it was a great eye-opener and a heart-opener.
A second
mentor was Father William Treacy who has long been revered and respected in this
community for his very public and very powerful leadership in the ecumenical
movement. Father Treacy was high in my personal pantheon early on. As a
young lad back in the early 1950’s, I served Mass for him at St. Anne’s Church
on Queen Anne Hill. In the 1960’s, he made his mark on the local
scene when he, along with Rabbi Raphael Levine and Dr. Robert Fine, a Protestant
clergyman, took to the television waves on the highly popular and impactful
weekly program known as “Challenge.” For 14 years those men engaged in
meaningful and, yes, challenging ecumenical dialogue as they brought to life the
meaning of ecumenism , exploring together in a mutually respectful and
stimulating manner some of the great issues of the day. Fifty years later,
Father Treacy is still a leader and a gentle giant in all things ecumenical. Now
in his early 90’s, he gives daily witness to the importance of ecumenism and
inter-religious dialogue in his ministry at Camp Brotherhood which he founded
along with his dear friend, Rabbi Levine.
A third
mentor was Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen whom I had the great – I would say
unparalleled – privilege of working with very closely for a dozen years when I
served as his Chancellor and Vicar General. Archbishop Hunthausen, who
served here as archbishop from 1975-1991 and whom many Protestant clergy and lay
people throughout the region often referred to as “my archbishop,” received his
‘on the job training’ to be bishop during the Vatican Council. He was
named a bishop by Pope John XXIII in August of 1962. Six weeks later, he
was in Rome for the opening session of the Council which unfolded over the next
four years and became, along with his extraordinary family, the most powerful
influence on his life and ministry. Archbishop Hunthausen lived and
breathed ecumenism. His innate respect for people, no matter who, and his
openness to points of view other than his own, made him a natural ecumenist, so
when the Church, through the Council, made ecumenism an integral part of its
mission, part of its very identity, he was ready!
The Church
in this city and this region owes some of the great strides it has made in
ecumenism to this courageous, gospel-rooted, humble and holy servant of God,
this prophetic leader who for countless people, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim
and Jew, believer and non-believer, was a voice for unity in diversity, for
dialogue and mutual respect. It is not in any sense an overstatement
to say that Archbishop Hunthausen’s chief personal and spiritual support group
as well as his trusted sounding board were his ecumenical colleagues among the
denominational executives of the area with whom he met religiously (pun
intended!) every Friday morning.
All of
this will, I hope, explain why, for me, Archbishop Hunthausen defines the very
meaning of ecumenism. How fitting it is that the building on the campus of
Seattle University that houses the ecumenical and inter-religious School of
Theology and Ministry bears his name!
My
friends, those three mentors turned ecumenism from a word to a way of life for
me – a way of being church. Thanks to them, I came to St. James Cathedral
believing that ecumenism was in no sense optional and that a cathedral could and
should be God’s house for all God’s children no matter what their beliefs or
their differences, a place where all, regardless of creed or lack thereof, can
come together in times of challenge and times of celebration, times of triumph
and times of testing – come together to pray, to listen, to learn, to work for
peace, to advocate for justice, to speak up for the voiceless, and to care for
those who cannot care for themselves. In other words, to do together what
we could do all by ourselves, but which, when we do them together, has the
greatest potential for really making a difference.
I need to
wind this up. We began with St. Paul’s powerful, unwavering affirmation of
faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “We will all be changed by the
victory of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul assures us. And so we will.
But we are still far from the change he had in mind, aren’t we? Thank God for
Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry and for the Church Council
of Greater Seattle. In a climate where ecumenism has lost much of its
early steam and some of its appeal, they are keeping ecumenism alive in this
community. Very much alive! But even so, I think it’s safe to say
that, at the grassroots level we have lost the excitement of the early years
when breakthroughs both human and doctrinal were the order of the day. And
to the extent that we have, we have diluted our corporate witness to the
resurrection of Jesus Christ and compromised that great change St. Paul spoke of
– the great transformation that Christ’s resurrection makes possible.
Let me
offer one example. I have long thought that we Christians should be
praying together more than once a year – more than during the Week of Prayer for
Christian Unity. Could the fact that we don’t, be responsible for the less than
overwhelming numbers who take part in this beautiful annual service? Could
it be because we have no real ingrained ‘habit’ of common prayer? It’s
true that St. Mark’s and St. James both offer wonderful weekly ecumenical
services on Sunday and Friday evenings. Compline and TaizĂ©, but they don’t
exhaust all the possibilities or represent all the great Christian prayer
traditions. Not by a long shot. If we truly believe in the power of prayer –
and we do, of course – should we not be looking for more ways to come together
to pray for all the things our world needs so badly, and to pray for the unity
that Jesus prayed for so earnestly the night before He died?
Something incredibly powerful happens whenever believers from across the great
Christian family come together in prayer and celebration as we have tonight,
something that can propel us forward along the road to unity.
My friends
in Christ, we have our work cut out for us, don’t we? In this year of 2012,
exactly fifty years after the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, it is my
earnest hope and prayer that we – all of us who are the Church of Christ – will
re-commit ourselves to live out Christ’s great prayer that we might all be one;
to live out St. Paul’s great dream of a world transformed by Christ’s victory
over death; to live out the Second Vatican Council’s great vision of Christians
working together to build the City of God!
My
friends, we do have our work cut out for us, but it’s a great work, and a work
we can, with God’s grace, accomplish. Together!
Father Michael G. Ryan