Tonight, Saturday 17 February 2007, is Chinese New Year’s Eve. Extended families all over the Chinese diaspora will sit at a round table for the traditional tuan yuan fan (团圆饭) or reunion dinner. Misunderstandings and petty quarrels will be set aside; bygones will be bygones. Come morning, on Chinese New Year’s Day, we will all visit one another with gifts of oranges and red packets for the children.
How I wish this could happen to the extended Anglican family.
This evening, the Primates meeting in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, would have wrapped up most of their discussion on the future of the Communion which has been given over to ridicule by The Episcopal Church (of USA)’s consecration of gay bishop Gene Robinson in 2003. It’s not about sexuality; it’s about submission to the Scriptures.
Will tonight’s dinner be a reunion dinner? In the morning, will the Primates be able in all honesty to share the Eucharist in the historic cathedral of Zanzibar, telling the world that peace has returned to the house?
I wish we can. The question is: At what price?
Declared unity based on an agreement that one party is not prepared to honor is a staged show. It is not worthy of people of faith holding out hope for a divided world. Ignoring truth, unity is deceptive and suicidal.
Jesus warned that his coming will bring division, separating those who seek the truth and those who deny it (Luke 12:51-52). Truth is the litmus test of our allegiance: Is it is to our Saviour and Lord, or to our sentimental ties and private agendas. It’s not about personality differences or misunderstandings; it’s about essential and eternal issues.
No one longs for unity more than Jesus did. And yet in His classic prayer for unity, Jesus pleaded, “Sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth.” (John 17:17) Only those sanctified by the truth of God’s word can be truly united in Christ.
Each of us has to face this litmus test. Some of us do so several times a day. We must choose division instead of deceit.
We must ask: Unity, yes, but at any price?
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