The Unity of Christ and Religious Pluralism: Sermon for Pentecost 25

We live in a fragmented world.  Our society is divided into increasingly contentious factions. Often, even our own lives seem split into different pieces and we feel torn between competing responsibilities, relationships, and goals. Moreover, even Christianity appears hopelessly partitioned into separate denominations, each “doing its own thing.”

            In the midst of this divided life, all of us long for wholeness. We seek a way for all the parts and pieces of life to come together and fit together.  Without that sense of integration, the unity of all into a larger whole, we do not feel whole. There always seems to be something missing; something in that does not fit; something that is in conflict.  Thus, peace, harmony, and integrity seem always beyond our grasp.

This is not only a psychological problem. It has spiritual roots. The very essence of sin is separation. Adam and Eve were one with God and one another in the Garden.  But as soon as they disobeyed the Lord’s command, they knew the sense of deep separation that we their descendents know even today.

            The proof of this separation caused by sin was that they hid from God, their loving Creator.  Yet they were not only separated from the God of goodness. They were also separated from one another, and the proof of that division was that they started blaming one another for their sin. Therefore, as a result of their disobedience, the unity of the creation was broken.  Soon, even the parts of the creation itself were divided against each other.

Thus at its foundation, the division is a spiritual problem.  If this is the case, then the

only remedy for the deep sense of division that all human beings feel is salvation. To us who are Orthodox Christians, salvation means more than being pardoned for sins committed. Salvation means healing—the restoration of wholeness of all the parts of ourselves and our lives.

This idea of salvation as reconciliation is in keeping with what we heard in our epistle last Sunday.  We heard then that the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth to bring healing, that is, the wholeness of salvation to the human race. As the Apostle puts it by His death on the cross, the Lord broke down the “dividing wall” between human beings.  The result is that in Christ the divisions of the human race are healed: such divisions as the separation between God and man; Jew and Gentile; slave and free; male and female (Colossians 3:11a). 

 This means that the search for wholeness is over. As the Apostle says, “Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11b).  The Lord Jesus Christ is now the foundation and source of unity in our lives—and ultimately the whole creation.

It is as if life were a jigsaw puzzle. All we have are pieces unless we find the one piece that makes all the others pieces fit together.  Or it is like a Roman Arch. At the top of the arch is a keystone.  This stone brings all the other stones of the arch together so that they bear the load as a unit.  Without the keystone, the whole arch falls apart.

In the same way, Christ is the organizing principle of everything in our lives.  In fact, He is the keystone of all creation. In Him, the separation of sin is reversed.  By His cross, sin is forgiven, separation is overcome, and all things come together in all things come together in the new reality of His reconciliation. Thus, the Apostle says in Colossians, “It pleased the Father…by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or in heaven, having made pace by His blood of His cross” (Colossians 1:19a and 20)

The Church is the manifestation and proof of this unity of all things in Christ. For those who belong to the Church, the Body of Christ, all things fit together.  In the Church, everything comes together into a new and greater whole.  In the Church, the unity in Christ that He accomplished is realized on earth as in heaven.

What we have said brings us to the Epistle from Ephesians for today.   We hear in our Epistle that our calling as members of the Body of Christ is to strive actively and earnestly to maintain that unity that the Lord has established. 

Note that it is in not our power to create that unity. The Lord Jesus Christ has already achieved it.  However, it is for us to live our lives and relate to one another in such a way that we maintain the unity of what the Lord has established. That is, it is our calling to promote, preserve, and indeed advance the salvation of the world, the healing of sinful separation, and the reconciliation of divisions wherever they are found.

The implications of this calling go against the popular ideas of how to establish peace among human beings.  From the Tower of Babel onward, human beings have tried to overcome the divisions among peoples and to unify the human race into one harmonious community.  In the past, the great empires tried to do it.  Now another strategy is being tried. 

Today’s wisdom is that we should give up trying to achieve oneness among peoples: we should just affirm the differences between people.  This strategy is called “pluralism.” Pluralism would have it that all lifestyles, all moralities, and all religions are equal.  Whatever the way of life, morality, or spirituality that someone chooses is OK for him.  We have not right to criticize it or try to convince him to change it.  

Now this ideal of pluralism may sound good.  It makes those who have this view seem tolerant.  However, it means that there is really nothing that brings people together, nothing besides the will to overlook the differences and separations between people that are still there. 

            Let me be clear: this idea contracts the Orthodox faith.  We Orthodox firmly believe that the Orthodox is the true Church that exists in unbroken continuity with the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles. Moreover, the Orthodox Church preserves the Holy Gospel unchanged and undivided.  That Gospel is that salvation is found in none other than Jesus Christ, for “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

            This means that as members of the Body of Christ, we cannot “maintain” the unity of our salvation by forfeiting our claim that in Christ all things come together as one.  Instead, in keeping with today’s Epistle, we hold, “There is one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:6).

Note that this short passage contains seven “one’s.”  These “one’s” constitute the unity of the Church as the Body of Christ. All the members of the Body of share in this seven-fold oneness.  In fact, the Church is nothing more or less than the Holy Communion of those who share in this perfect and complete unity.

Let’s consider what it means to say that all these aspects of the Church are “one.” “One” means that there is no other.  There are not two, or three or four. Rather “one” indicates something that is singular, unique, and without equal.

Therefore, when we confess with the Apostle, “There is one body and one spirit… one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all (Ephesians 4:4-6), we are saying that no other kind of these things exist but them.  

For example, to say that our Christian faith is one of many faiths does not agree with the sense of the idea of “one faith. If there are other so-called “faiths,” then these faiths cannot be the same as the “one faith” that stands alone and by itself as “one.” The other “faiths” cannot compare with the “one faith”-- that is, the “true faith.”

Yet there is another implication of the repetition of the word “one”  in this passage. The word “one” refers to something that is complete in and of itself. Thus, to say that faith, baptism, the spirit, and the Lord,  etc.  are “one” means that each one of them is whole and entirely sufficient in itself.

 For instance, once again, the Apostle is saying that the “one faith” that is ours in Christ is entirely sufficient for us. There is nothing lacking in it, nothing missing.  The same goes for the “one” body, spirit, hope, faith, baptism, and God the Father of us all.

If we accept other “faiths,” hopes, lords,” baptisms, and gods as equal to ours, then we are saying that they can add to what we have. What we have in the Orthodox Church is now somehow incomplete.

 If we accept these other things are equal, then what holds them all together?  If we believe that they are equal, then we should not be here. We should be out in the world somehow looking for the greater source and foundation of unity that would unite all the faiths of the world.

            I have tried to show that the basic popular ideas of religious and ethical pluralism go against the foundations of Orthodoxy.  It does so because Orthodoxy teaches that it exists to preserve the “fullness” of the Christian faith from the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles.

            The Lord has given us a precious legacy. It is the answer to the fragmentation of our society and the divisions of our world.  What a loss it would be if we traded this heritage of the unity of our salvation in Christ for some cheap substitute.   The world’s pluralism is only a pretend unity; it can never really bring people together in something that they have in common. The wholeness that that we have in Christ that I have described offers a substantial, common ground in which all of every race and background can be united.

            The false unity of pluralism arises from the desire not to offend anyone, no matter what they may think or believe.  Yet we have a divine calling as members of the Body of Christ to maintain the unity that is ours in Christ.  We cannot do by surrendering the claims of the Orthodox Church.  If we accepted today’s pluralism, we would ignore the words of our epistle:

“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all (Ephesians 4:4-6).

            The claims that the Orthodox Church is the true Church that proclaims the true Gospel are not intolerant or outdated.  They are an expression of our Orthodox faith in Christ for our salvation, and not only our salvation but the salvation of the entire world. In defending these claims, we confess the true faith that is ours in Christ Jesus. And in striving to maintain that unity in the Church and in our lives, we safeguard and uphold the wholeness that the Lord established by His death and resurrection.