CHRISTIAN UNITY Churches Begin Week Of Prayer

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30764, 31 May 1965, Page 14

CHRISTIAN UNITY Churches Begin Week Of Prayer

"I believe the pressure of the times is being used by God to stir the churches to a fresh sense of need,” said the Rev. A. MacLeod in a sermon at the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church yesterday to open the week of prayer for Christian unity. “In the face of the Indifference and apathy of millions, the spirit of God is forcing us to ask: Why do we have denominations? Are they necessary? Why must we be bound by divisions that took place eenturies ago? Is there ne way out of our inherited denominational tangles?” he said.

“Today we are beginning to forget the things that lie behind. We are beginning to lay aside the weight of denominational prejudice and the sins of pride and selfsufficiency which beset us. We are beginning to look again to Jesus Christ and ask: ‘Lord what wilt Thou have us to do?’ Mr MacLeod said a white pastor in America who had been severely beaten up because he supported Negroes in their fight for civil rights was asked why he continued to support them. He had replied: “Because there is no segregation at the foot of the cross.” “And we would add there are no denominations at the foot of the cross,” Mr MacLeod said. “There, we are one in Christ. And if we are one there, why are we so divided now? “I am convinced that the barriers we have built up between our denominations must be broken down. This will not be easy. The walls are strong and have stood for hundreds of years: but Christ is stronger than our divisions; and His spirit is at work.” In Salvation In the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, the Very Rev. P. Kegrney preached on the history of salvation. The words of Martha (“I have believed that you are the Messiah, you are the Son of God. the whole world has been waiting for you”) summed up the spiritual picture of the world she knew, he said. The Jewish people had been yearning for the saviour who had been promised from the beginning. His life and work had been outlined in prophecy. Their faith in Him was the reason for their solidarity. Now He had come.

In Christ man could now discover true unity, “Christ has united all who accept Him in a family of God. They were to be His chosen people —those who believe in Christ and seek to model their lives on His Those who are One with Him, made so by baptism. become one with each other.

"Our task is to recognise our unity in Christ and to accept it We must pray to the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and take away any hardness of heart. We must orav for the docility to be guided to an ever fuller understanding of the message Christ gave. “Our hope as true Christians must be that the Holy Spirit will act today as suddenly and dramatically as He has done in the past in order to help men of good will to achieve the Christian unity that is so desirable.”