UNITY OCTAVE 2020
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity - 2020
We
look but what kind of looking do we do? How do we see and understand ourselves,
especially in light of our relationship with the Living Christ? We know that
God speaks to us in still small voices, but also in the people and places we
least expect. In supposed barren hard places there can spring unimaginable
beauty and nourishment.
In
spite of the turbulence of the world at the present time, we also discover acts
of kindness, of love, forgiveness and hospitality in places or from people we
did not expect. As in the natural world, there are still the places where the
water of life seeps into the mainstream and brings colour and joy and offers a
hopeful future.
We are invited in this year’s Week Of Prayer for
Christian Unity materials to see God working through people and places which
offer unusual kindness. If only we would do the appropriate kind of looking.
This year's resources are prepared by the churches of Malta, who have come together to inspire and invite us to pray!
Introduction to this year's Theme:
Our
prayer for Christian unity is deeply rooted in the Bible. We pray for unity
because Jesus prayed that His disciples would be one, that the world might
believe (John 17:20-21). St Paul also urged the churches to which he wrote to
recognise their unity in Christ, even though there was much diversity within
them (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).
For
the churches in Malta, the Bible has special relevance for the shared life of
the churches there, for the Gospel first came to Malta in the events that are
told in the Acts of the Apostles, where St Paul and those with him encountered
unusual kindness from the inhabitants. Many people in Britain and Ireland will
have visited Malta on holiday and seen the place where these events are
believed to have taken place. This is a reminder that Christianity is not
merely a spirituality, but a faith rooted in events in human history: the
redemption of humanity and the whole of creation. The unity for which we pray
therefore serves to make Christ known in the world.
The story of St Paul’s being shipwrecked on
Malta in Acts 27 and 28 leads us, during this Week of Prayer for Christian
Unity, to reflect upon many aspects of our own lives and the lives of our
churches. As we approach one another, seeking unity, we recognize that we
sometimes carry baggage from history, tradition and cultural expectation, which
can weigh us down and threaten to overwhelm us. There is the danger that, in
the face of that experience, we might lose sight of the hope which first called us and so give up reaching for the light which Christ offers us.
St Paul
challenged his fellow travellers, sailors, soldiers and prisoners to keep up
their courage. In the face of apparent desperation and hopelessness, we are
challenged to put our trust in God and allow ourselves to be held and carried
through the waters. There will be times when we are broken, as individuals and
as churches, and looking back we shall see not just the one set of footprints
in the sand, but hundreds, as we are surrounded and supported by those who love
us. There will be times when, standing in the storms of our own making, we are
challenged to demonstrate unusual kindness in the face of worldly indifference.
To demonstrate unusual kindness is to see the sister
and brother in the monster’s shame and know that they too are children of God.
To demonstrate unusual kindness is to give without counting the cost, and to
allow ourselves to be given unto without questioning worth. As we reflect upon,
and pray for, Christian unity, we acknowledge the injury that we have caused,
the pain that we carry, the baggage that we must jettison. We pray for
Christian unity as the place from which we can move onward in faith and in hope
for the redemption of the world and the restoration of creation.
For this year’s Week of Prayer for
Christian Unity, we accompany the churches of Malta, praying with and alongside
them, praying also for them in their Christian journey as they seek the unity
for which Christ prayed. And we rejoice with them that Malta traces its
Christian origins back to the time of the Apostles. And in so doing, we enter
into the drama of St Paul, those that travelled with him, and the inhabitants
whom they met, to discover our shared unity, and in so doing recognise the
importance of unusual acts of kindness that bear witness to the Gospel of peace
and reconciliation.
[courtesy: www.ctbi.org.uk/weekofprayer]
