I was convicted lately with the proposition that the world needs more soccer. I don’t even like soccer. It’s so boring. I like when a goal is scored, and I like thinking about the few moments just before the goal is scored so I can see how it happened, but you have to wade through so many long and boring minutes!
However, everybody in the world plays soccer. It’s remarkable really.
Iraq has a soccer team. Indonesia has a soccer team. Scotland has a soccer team, and Kenya has one too. The Chileans play the Mexicans and the Ethiopians play the Russians. And everybody can participate. It has its own language, its own rules, and its own international governing boards. A group can sit down in Berlin and watch a match between the Irish and the Brazilians—there’s no language barrier. There’s no culture barrier. There are no walls to breach; only a game that everybody understands. Soccer exists above nations!
Soccer (Football) is a parable of the kingdom of God…as much as I hate to say it.
I was moved lately looking back at the biography of Thomas F. Torrance (which I recommended for summer reading!). Torrance died last December. He was a Scottish Presbyterian minister, children of missionaries and born in inland China, and a renowned theologian of Edinburgh who wrestled with the intersection between modern science and Christianity. But Torrance also devoted himself to ecumenical efforts—the desire for the Church to be unified in worship and theology.
Torrance, a Presbyterian, knew that the differences between Churches could not be washed out so easily with sappy calls for “unity.” He was a student of the Fathers of the early Church, and he realized that a better move for the ecumenical movement was to study the ancient Church together. He represented WARC (World Alliance of Reformed Churches) in meetings with the Greek Orthodox Church in Istanbul and Geneva from 1979-1983. They decided to devote their time to studying the Trinity together in the writings of the Fathers with hope of coming to some consensus of what can be confessed about God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These discussions led, after years and years of hard work, to an “Agreed Statement on the Holy Trinity” signed in Geneva on March 13, 1991, between WARC and the Greek Orthodox Church.
If you are still reading…SOCCER IS LIKE THE TRINITY! As Christians, we should be able to talk about God together regardless of denomination; to declare the Lordship of Christ side by side to a world that denies Him too readily; to stand by one another and bear one another’s burdens gladly as Christ bore our sins on the cross; to make statements, to make confessions, to read ancient documents and to pore over the Scriptures and worship God with one voice!!
Yes, there’s something we can learn from soccer.
So, there are two things I’m trying to say in this column: (1) I really like T. F. Torrance and wish I could do cool stuff like he did, and I hope you have some heroes like him to emulate! (2) I think we, as readers and participants of Common Grounds Online, should be able to think about, talk about, and pray about what our commitment is to the unity of the Church. I say this as a fully committed Presbyterian—a Reformation Schismatic! How does Jesus’ prayer that the Church may be one as you and I (Father) are one (John 17:20-23) shape your Christian walk? What does a unified, holy, and universal Church mean to you?
I’d love to have your comments. And I look forward to the promised day when the Church is one.
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Thanks, Tim, for a fresh and
Mon, 06/16/2008 - 11:33 — Lois Westerlund (not verified)Thanks, Tim, for a fresh and delightful analogy. Union of Christ's body--what a vitally important topic, given the last prayer of our Lord Jesus! I ponder: What is this union that Jesus prays for? What does it consist of? At the moment, I find three categories of thinking: Organizational, Confessional, and Spiritual.
I cannot see that the organization model is well-supported by Scripture. It is external, and the Bible is about nothing if it is not about the heart of a man! One can have great personal disunity among members of the same organization, same denomination, even same local church!
The confessional, which Tim writes about and admires in the efforts of T. F. Torrance, has much more to recommend it. Believing the same Truth is surely a ground for unity. And true unity does not seem possible without some shared essential beliefs about the triune God and sinful man. Yet, even here, I find that there can be significant dis-unity among those who share a common confession. Instead of peace, there is contention.
This has led me to the third description of unity: spiritual. This kind of unity is often looked-down upon, dismissed from serious consideration, seen as a fall-back position because we haven’t achieved the first two, sort of a pietistic dream that isn’t worth much.
But this seems to me the only definition that will answer to the context. Jesus prays that his followers will have the same oneness that He has with the father. (John 17: 21-23) There we see true oneness. The Son does only what the Father wills. The Father loves to heap glory and honor on the Son. Read through the Gospels to be struck again by the tender love that exists between Father and Son, each desiring that the other have the Glory! The model that Jesus sets before us is remarkable for its absence of self-regard, of what an older generation called, simply, "Self."
This oneness, free from wounded egos, pride, the conviction that one's own ideas are the best because they are one's own, is only possible supernaturally—that is what occurs to me as I have recently thought about this. Human attempts at unity, whether theological (the early church) or political (Communism) or sociological (the communes of the 60’s) always fail.
We do not, apart from new life from above and the continued working of God’s Holy Spirit, become selfless. This is what strikes me as I think about the kind of unity Jesus is praying for. Our selves get in the way.
It follows, for me, that the oneness that Jesus prays for is truly a gift from above—that why He asks for it in prayer! It is evidence of a supernatural life within! It also follows, for me, that what gets in the way of this kind of oneness is, quite simply, sin--my unrepentant heart, callous to the hurt I cause another, indifferent to the need for honest, humble communication. This description also fits the organic oneness of the body, pictured elsewhere in Scripture. We are one because Christ has made us His body. When my toe hurts, I hurt.
With this understanding, Christ’s prayer becomes, in a sense, another aspect of his prayer that we love one another. If we love each other, we will be one. And that is how the world will know we are Christ’s. (vs. 23) I think this is a far greater, far more demanding, far more costly--not a lesser--unity. It is something only God can do.
That’s my input, anyway.
Thank you, Lois Westerlund,
Mon, 06/16/2008 - 12:10 — Timothy McConnell (not verified)Thank you, Lois Westerlund, for taking the conversation to the next, and more erudite, level!
Yes, I would never want to be counted among those who dismiss or disregard the spiritual unity of the Church. There is no reality like God's reality, and God is Spirit.
Nevertheless, the spiritual unity of the Church is both invisible and eschatological. It is not physically manifest in any form; it is rarely exercised (except in powerful movements of the Spirit like PromiseKeepers and the Great Awakening, etc.); and it is more of a hope for the fulfillment of the end times than a present day goal. Isn't the Christian life very much about making invisible things visible, and trying to manifest the order of the end of times in our own day? I wonder how we do that with Christ's prayer for the unity of the Church.
I was recently at a friend's Church, and they took time to explain that even as they were going to recite the Apostle's Creed as part of worship and confess faith in "the holy catholic church" the congregation should not worry that this means the Roman Catholic Church. Of course, it doesn't mean the Roman Catholic Church (the word just means "universal")--but of course it also does! Inasmuch as the RCC is also part of the invisible Church universal.
I very much like your comments about the shared burden of the stumped toe. If we truly (spiritually) are one body, we will feel one another's pains and joys quite organically and our response will be equally as organic. I think there is more unity found in shared action than in dialogue. The reason I admire Torrance's approach is that he knew that ecumenical confession is not theological dialogue, it is worship; and worship too is action.
It's funny, I recently looked back on my career in ministry to find that I have almost always been involved in interdenominational, or even pluralistic (in the case of the military chaplaincy) ministry. I have come to relish the opportunity to pray and worship with Christians of other churches than my own. I hope readers will take those opportunities when they come along.
Thanks for continuing the conversation! Just what I hoped...
Timothy