Spiritual Disciplines for Ecumenism: Prayer, Love, and Honesty

The first, fore­most, and final thing Chris­tians are called to do in ecu­menism is to pray for the unity of the church. This prayer is Jesus’ own prayer, and we who are dis­ci­ples of Jesus are called to make it our own. Such prayer entrusts our hopes, fears, doubts, angers, and joys to our heav­enly Father. It also forms us to lis­ten to His will and obey it.

Hap­pily, prayer is the most vis­i­ble form of ecu­menism today. Most Chris­tians are able to pray with one another, at least pri­vately if not always pub­licly. Joint prayer ser­vices are com­mon and encour­ag­ing signs even when the sacra­ments are not shared. The Week of Prayer for Chris­t­ian Unity is one of the old­est ecu­meni­cal insti­tu­tions. Cel­e­brated from Jan­u­ary 18 to 25 in the north­ern hemi­sphere and around Pen­te­cost in the south­ern hemi­sphere, this spe­cial period of prayer had its seeds already in 1908 when an Angli­can priest pro­posed an “octave for unity” (eight days of prayer). The Faith and Order move­ment picked up the idea in 1926, and in 1966 the World Coun­cil of Churches and the Catholic Church began jointly pub­lish­ing wor­ship mate­ri­als for this event every year. Prayer for the unity of the church also belongs in daily prayer. It is implicit in the prayer our Lord taught us: “Your king­dom come; Your will be done.”

Prayer for the unity of the church will bear many fruits, and one of these fruits is love. Love makes us rec­og­nize true chil­dren of God, true broth­ers and sis­ters of Christ, in Chris­tians out­side our own church bound­aries. We look upon them and see not strangers or for­eign­ers but mem­bers of our own body, per­sons to be loved as God first loved us. Remem­ber that Jesus’ prayer for the unity of his dis­ci­ples was accom­pa­nied by the com­mand to love one another, pre­cisely so the world would rec­og­nize Jesus’ dis­ci­ples by their love.

This love has con­se­quences for our the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sions. As Luther put it in his expla­na­tion of the Eighth Com­mand­ment in the Small Cat­e­chism, we are to “come to [our neigh­bors’] defense, speak well of them, and inter­pret every­thing they do in the best pos­si­ble light.” All of us want to be taken by what we intend at our best, not by our fail­ures to live up to our own ideals. We owe the same to our Chris­t­ian neigh­bors (not to men­tion every­one else!). We should seek the best that they have to offer, not mag­nify the worst. It’s very easy—too easy—to attack another person’s the­ol­ogy. But such actions are not signs of Chris­t­ian love. Ecu­meni­cal love means seek­ing out the best in our neighbor’s the­ol­ogy instead of the worst. Such love builds trust and makes the next fruit of ecu­meni­cal prayer possible.

When we pray for Chris­t­ian unity, and when we grow in love for one another, it becomes pos­si­ble for us to speak to each other with com­plete hon­esty. Dis­hon­esty is in fact a great temp­ta­tion in ecu­menism. Often we are fac­ing old ene­mies. We remem­ber our worst expe­ri­ences of them, the neg­a­tive stereo­types we’ve been raised on. We assume they haven’t improved. We sus­pect that they’ve prob­a­bly got­ten worse, and we’re not inter­ested in hear­ing the real story. Or, we have for­got­ten what we our­selves have done wrong. We have a rosy pic­ture of our own his­tory and con­ve­niently over­look our own seri­ous mis­takes. We don’t want to hear some­one else’s ver­sion of the story. Or, we are frus­trated and embar­rassed by the cur­rent state of our churches but we don’t want to look bad in front of oth­ers. We make our­selves appear bet­ter than we are in real­ity. We lie about our real sins and failures.

Can ecu­menism suc­ceed in such con­di­tions of dis­hon­esty? Cer­tainly not. Our churches will rec­on­cile only when we value the truth more than our own rep­u­ta­tions. But there is also a dan­ger on the other side. Love often wants to cover over the dif­fi­cult spots as if they didn’t exist. Love is by nature self-sacrificing. It can appear that the best way to advance the ecu­meni­cal cause is to sac­ri­fice our own beliefs, com­mit­ments, or con­vic­tions. But this is also an error. The dis­ci­pline of hon­esty directs the dis­ci­pline of love in the right way, toward the full­ness of God, in whom there is no com­pe­ti­tion between love and truth.

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Jed Wilson says:
September 9, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Methinks as we each go, so goes the church. Each of these dis­ci­plines is as impor­tant for us indi­vid­u­ally and in our own rela­tion­ships; since we are the church, I think ecu­menism fol­lows directly. And per­haps this is ulti­mately the point you are get­ting to.
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paul sailhamer says:
September 10, 2010 at 3:17 pm
“Aye, and there’s the rub.” Speak­ing the Truth in Love. Con­fronting a brother who is in Error. Not in error with my opin­ion but with Scrip­ture. That was Luther’s dis­tin­guish­ing mark was it not? Jesus, in John 17:17, also prays that the Father would “sanc­tify the church in Truth…the Truth in His Word.” Glad to be on this jour­ney with you and the oppor­tu­nity to con­verse of these things in an appro­pri­ate way.
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