Who is welcome?

I started forming this blog post in my mind with the analogy of the Anglican Church being one bread and therefore one body. But (I have to confess) with regret I realised that in order to include the whole Anglican Church, some of whom may never attend a Mass/Eucharist, I would have to scrap it. So instead we are working with ribbons, in the hope that I may include us all. So we take for the Conservative Evangelicals a length of white ribbon and lay it on the table. For the Traditional Anglo Catholics we will take a red one and place it at the other end of the table. Here you have two lines with a gap in the middle, this is not the whole Church. So here I will bring in a pink ribbon and super glue it, overlapping one end with the white, and the other end on the red. Here we have a continuum, from one end of the Anglican Church to the other. We are indelibly joined together, we are one. But we are also different, as the colours suggest. One end has a very particular set of thoughts on theology, doctrine and ecclesiology and the other end has not quite polar opposite but certainly very different ones. The pinks in the middle and overlapping the whites and reds, represent everything in between. But when you join us together under the title Anglican Church we are one, it is no mean feat to to hold that all together and I rather suspect if we were to tug rather too hard, the ribbons may split, despite the glue holding them together.

You may think that this is all rather obvious and it should be and on the face of it, it is. We are one broad Church, who loves one another. Scratch beneath a veneer and you have a reality, lots and lots of layers not really integrating.

The last few months have for me, involved a great deal of compromise so as that these layers might just stay together. I have let go of many hopes and prayers, that I might not offend. So that all may be welcome. Only to find that in return those I agree with no longer felt welcome, not because of anything I had said or done. Merely because of the situation we found our selves to be in. It genuinely breaks my heart that we are in a situation that splits the Church so sorely that we all no longer all feel comfortable gathering at Christ's table.

There are so many differences between us all. They can and never will be reconciled to an agreement. But we should at least all feel welcome enough to gather at Christ's table. We may not chose to accept what is going on, but we should at least feel welcomed enough that we can sit in the same building. Where is the warmth of Christian welcome and love. Jesus did not just surround himself with those he loved, but sought out those whom he thought were sinners in order to teach them his love. I have sought to offer my hand in friendship, to find my friends turned away. This has in recent weeks torn me apart. I believe whole heartedly in Church unity, but my experiences recently have pitched me against this. I was for a long time angry and resentful. It is not something I am happy to see in myself or admit, but it is none the less true. We should seek to love one another in our differences, to show what it means to us by showing Christ's love and not anger and hatred.

Who is welcome? We all should be. Who would Christ love? Us all. We all have our faith and our faults, Our beliefs and our non beliefs. None of us know for definite if we are right or wrong, we will find out on the day of judgement. We have to live with integrity according to what we believe, on that I believe there is no compromise and I never would do so. However we will also be judged on how we treated others who do the same, even if we believe them to be heretical. God's love is for all and we are not to sit in judgement of others, this is not our job. Our job is to show others through a loving example what we believe God's truth is and how to abide by it. If we do not show love and compassion, we will only find it harder to show people these truths, for they will rebel against intolerance.

I am not sure how much longer we will sustain the one Church model, we have set ourselves on a path to conflict. There is no overriding theology one way or another and therefore as a Church we can only now proceed protecting both integrities. We must do this, however, in an equal balanced view, because neither overrides the other. One  integrity may not offer you popularity, but Christianity is not a popularity or political exercise, it is much more than that. It is about our salvation, our salvation was won by Christ losing the popularity contest and being crucified. Sometimes I think as a Church we lose sight of this.  So as difficult as it maybe for us all, I believe we are better together but we must be together as equals. If we are not we leave the festering wounds for hatred to take a hold, that will eat away at our hearts and our Church.