‘I believe One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’ we will sing together shortly, words from the Nicene Creed that Christians have employed since the fifth century to express their understanding of the divine institution to which we belong.   Anglicans have particularly cherished these sentiments of universality and more than universality as crucial to their own self-understanding.  Note that we do not claim to believe in ‘the One, English …’ or even ‘the One, British …’   This pregnant phrase keeps us in our place.   The Church in which we believe, and of which we are members, is One - that is, it exhibits unity, a singleness deriving from its second characteristic:  Holy.   For this is God’s church, not constructed by human hands, minds or even committees - but given to us by God, and therefore partaking of that unity which is in its full perfection known only in God himself.   It is Catholic, not because we wish to underline our legal right to have taken over the religious buildings and endowments of the ancient church of this land at the Reformation, but in that far richer meaning of the word - universal.   And it is Apostolic because this is the church of the twelve apostles, the companions of Jesus, the witnesses of his death and resurrection, and the initial recipients of that divine charge which still binds us today ‘Go into all the world and preach the Gospel’.

So the Church we believe in is not ours, is not local, a cosy affirmation of our sense of community with each other:  it is God’s, linking us eternally with Almighty God, linking us geographically with sister and brother Christians throughout the world, and linking us historically through the Christian centuries back to the Apostles and thus to our Lord Jesus Christ himself.   The Church we believe in is not St Mary Abbots, not the Church of England, not even the Anglican Communion.   It is the Christian Church, created by God.   And I think that one of the things we Anglicans have got right is our insistence that we form merely part of this church, that we have no exclusive possession of the inheritance of faith:  it is something that we share with all Christians, of every denomination.   More than that:  we never claim to have got it right - in the sense that the church to which we belong on earth is perfect.   By no means:   we understand that our human fallibility constantly misunderstands and confuses the perfection that God seeks to give us, that we are highly practised in shutting our ears, minds and hearts to what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us.   So the church we experience, although Divine, and an authentic vehicle for our saving encounter with God, is constantly striving towards that perfection which is God’s alone, rather than experiencing it in all its fullness here and now.   So we Anglicans, although confident that we are indeed members of God’s eternal, universal church, know that the church we inhabit is imperfect, falls short of Gods’ will, and must always seek to discern where the Holy Spirit is trying to take us next.

And if this seems a somewhat messy and complex view of the nature of the Church, it is certainly of a piece with the Anglican Communion itself.    Our world-wide fellowship is not logically coherent, the result of some grand plan, the working-out over the centuries of a strategy evolved by a commission of learned Bishops determining exactly what a universal church should look like.   On the contrary, its growth was haphazard, unplanned, predicated more than anything else by the expansion of the British Empire (which was, of course, also a pragmatic and unexpected development).   We are a communion of churches, not a single church.   We have no single, central curia, no parliament or synod that can make binding pronouncements on the member churches.   Each church is autonomous, with its own constitution and able to determine its own liturgy and organisation.   What unites us is a shared history and communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.   We all look to the Archbishop - but he is no Pope, able to make infallible pronouncements.   His leadership is essentially moral, exercised by persuasion and influence, with no powers of coercion or punishment.   Since 1867 he has called the Bishops of the whole Communion to the Lambeth Conference every ten years or so.   But the status of resolutions passed at Lambeth Conferences is unclear - to what extent are they binding on all the member churches?

Currently,  the Anglican Communion itself is in a state of crisis - although, as is usual with such dramatic statements, such a crisis might not be all that apparent to anyone observing or participating in the daily life of one of its constituent elements (like, for example, St Mary Abbots).   The media are thick with denunciation and counter-denunciation, with accusations of heresy and threats of schism.   In response to all this the Windsor Report was published last Monday, the response of a Commission set up to examine the state of the Anglican Communion following the Episcopal Church in the USA’s consecration as a Bishop of a man living openly in a homosexual relationship;  the authorisation of a Canadian diocese of same-sex unions;  and the reaction to these events which has seen some bishops from other provinces of the Communion, outraged by what they see as a fundamental breach of Biblical principles, provide Episcopal ministry to traditionalist parishes within these errant dioceses without the sanction of the incumbent bishop, and thereby breaking a cardinal rule of church order.   Note that the Report does not address the issue of whether it ought to be possible to consecrate as bishop an active homosexual, or to bless homosexual relationships.   Its remit was to decide whether the conventions governing the Anglican Communion had been broken by these actions, if so what ought to be done about it, and whether these conventions needed to be strengthened - or turned into something much more binding - if the Communion is to continue.

Yes, it decided.   Although the Dioceses of New Hampshire and New Westminster have followed exactly the procedures of their own churches they had nevertheless deliberately flouted resolutions of the Lambeth Conference.   But the precipitate action of those traditionalist Bishops in eagerly ministering to parishes in other dioceses was equally a breach of our Communion’s conventions.   They should all apologise, and not do it again.   And if the North American radicals cannot find it in themselves to apologise, or desist from repeating their actions, then they should think hard about whether they should turn up at the international Anglican gatherings which pass resolutions they are not going to honour.   To stop such scandals happening again, the Report proposes that each member church of the Anglican Communion should subscribe to a binding Covenant, stating precisely the unity that we share and the relationships and commitments of communion.   The Archbishop of Canterbury would have a body of advisors to help him decide if a member church had undertaken actions which, rather then being matters indifferent to the essence of Anglican understanding and therefore legitimately accommodated within our famous diversity, constitute a breach of the fundamentals which bind us together - and therefore break the Covenant.

You can see the attraction of this suggestion.   At last there will be a point of reference to determine what is legitimately included within, and what lies outside, world-wide Anglicanism.   This will please other denominations who despair of ever pinning down Anglican belief and practise - it varies so much from place to place.   Each church will know explicitly what it owes to its fellow churches - and what they owe them.

But there are problems.   I set aside the practicalities of how long it would take each member church to determine whether they wanted to subscribe to such a Covenant, and the likelihood of a complete moratorium of scandal-causing actions in the meantime.   The savage denunciations that have sullied our Anglican relationships over the last two years suggest that the poor Archbishop, even with his panel of advisors, is going to have to spend all his time being asked to determine whether this or that action is beyond the limits of the Covenant.   And the whole Report seems to me to ignore the realities of how our understanding of God’s will develops.   Its account of how the Anglican Communion decided that it was permissible for individual provinces to ordain women to the priesthood, but that such ordinations did not have to be recognised by every member church, seem to me to be unrealistically rosy.   I remember a far more painful process - and one that is by no means resolved.   Radical change is not something achieved by every member of an organisation simultaneously.   My reading of history - never mind church history - strongly suggests that the most profound changes (like the abolition of slavery or the emancipation of women) always need a maverick few, a body of trailblazers prepared to face obloquy and excoriation before the majority catches up and realises that the new development is, of course, self-evidently right.    Truth is arrived at by far more dynamic flux than this Report allows.

I started off with a quotation from the Nicene Creed.   It’s worth remembering that Nicea, and the other great Councils of the early church, on whose deliberations we and all the orthodox churches base our fundamental understanding of God and the nature of Christ, were not courteous and measured debates.   They were occasions of denunciation, anathema and exile.   Rival factions started riots and mayhem in support of their conviction.   In fact, what we commonly call the Nicene Creed is in fact not the creed issues by the Council of Nicea in 325.   It is rather a revision of that creed made about a century later.   Its instructive to examine the differences between the original and the revision (this is how your clergy spend three years in theological college).   The original creed included four anathemas at the end - that is, after stating what we as Christians believe, it listed four heresies, things about the nature of God and Jesus which, if you believed, you certainly couldn’t count yourself a real Christian.   It was therefore an instrument to include some Christians and exclude others.   The creed which we recite has quite properly deleted these anathemas.   It’s surely far closer to the mind of Christ to define by that which is positive than by the negative.   But this raises a central issue:  which version of the creed was more accurately inspired by the Holy Spirit?   Christian councils always claim that they are being led by God.   It’s perfectly clear that they can’t all be.

The Anglican churches in North America are not alone in considering that the most recent Lambeth Conference’s decision that homosexual relationships were incompatible with an authentic Christian life, was deeply flawed.   It therefore cannot  bind them to refrain from what they believe is a long-overdue acknowledgment of the goodness inherent in faithful, loving and committed homosexual partnerships - that they find in such partnerships the signs of the presence of the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.    They are condemned for acting in a way wholly contrary to scripture - but, as always, it’s all about how you think scripture should be used.   Of course, you can find in the Bible condemnations of homosexual behaviour, but you can argue that the part of scripture most central to those who call themselves Christians - that is the accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ - is what should primarily govern us.   And in the example of Jesus we find again and again an acceptance of those on the margins of religion and society, the shocking claim that those despised by the religiously pure will enter the kingdom of heaven before them.   You all know on which side of this debate I place myself.

The proposed Covenant might just provide us with a new instrument of unity offering a tangible focus of Anglican identity.   It might give us a touchstone, a reference point of what it is to be Anglican that has objective, independent existence.   But it might be used as a straightjacket to bind and stifle that spirit of exploration and enquiry of what it is to be a Christian, and how we might live Christian lives, which have marked the best of the Anglican witness to the universal church.   I suspect that whatever best-intentioned measures are put in place, we are going to see for some time a succession of bitter feuds within our Communion over issues of sexuality and gender.   They may well result in its partial breakup - although with such poorly-defined structures of unity, such fractures, deeply as I would regret them, will perhaps not make such a profound difference to the casual observer - and I expect that we could enter a pattern of  angry parting, trial separation and renewal of old vows, just like a many other rocky relationships.

Yesterday here at St Mary Abbots we had the privilege of hosting a day of celebration for the church of Papua New Guinea - one of Provinces of the Anglican Communion.   I expect that the Bishops, priests and people of that diocese - to say nothing of its Church of England supporters who turned out in numbers to share the festival - hold many views on the nature of the church, and of what constitutes authentic Christian life - that I don’t particularly share.   But we did share the one unity that matters.   Gathered around the Lord’s Table, remembering the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ and sharing the bread and wine of the Kingdom we were brought together in and by the power of God.   What we had in common was far, far stronger than that which divided us.   The Anglican Communion has always found its true unity in prayer and worship knowing that the Communion that binds us together is not that made by our hands, brains or imaginations - but achieved for us by the costly, infinite and eternal love of God.