This is a luncheon talk meant to be a word of encouragement to those who engage in the ecumenical task. It has background, a prelude, a true story, and some reflections. Having four parts you will immediately know that it is not a sermon!

Last May or June Betty said something to me like this: "We have an interesting little church with about 18-20 pretty vital members who want to keep their little church open. The retired pastor who has served them is getting too old to continue and some of them mow your "Suzanne" in Glasgow. They love her and mow of the wonderful work she does. (Betty was referring to the Rev. Suzanne Barrow, vicar of St Andrew’s Glasgow, a church that has grown from 20 members to 80 in three years.) They love her preaching style and her commitment to outreach. They want to mow if she could pastor their church. They are willing to have church at 9 and that will allow her to be in Glasgow in plenty of time for the 11 service. My initial response was "That might work, but let me chat with Suzanne first" The chat went as follows: Suzanne would you be willing to do this? Yes, I have already worked with some of those folks in the community. I pointed out that as a priest laboring at the bottom of our salary scale this would help and that we would insist that the Presbyterians would help contribute to her pension. (She is a second career vocation and will not receive a full pension.) Can you handle the extra commitment? "I think so, I would use the same sermon." Then I became directive: "When

you are asked to do Holy Communion be sure you use a Eucharistic Prayer with the words of the institution and the ‘epiclesis’ in close proximity, and be sure that some wine is present. Of course the elements must be consumed at the end of the service. She had a conversation with Betty, and the deal was closed. (He ends the background section-your redemption is drawing near!)

            The Prelude: About four weeks after these conversations, I was making my annual Episcopal visitation to St. Andrew's Glasgow. This congregation of 80 people has a prison ministry, does a farmers market every Saturday in the summer, grows a free vegetable garden on the grounds of a large trailer park, and is one of the most open and inclusive churches in our diocese. In short I love to visit, and we must have had about four baptisms and four confirmations that Saturday. The little church was packed to the gills, and taking up the back two rows were 17 Presbyterians from Munfordville.

After the service they lined up to greet me and thank me for allowing Suzanne to be their pastor. Cap Middleton, one of the congregation's elders, made the following statement: "Bishop, every church in Munfordville – by whatever name – is in fact a fundamentalist, judging, fear-preaching church and we exist to offer the gospel in a different way. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making that possible." Soon after this amazing encounter, the stories began to emerge. A very wealthy member of one of the Baptist Churches was attending. Apparently Suzanne was preaching on the text "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Somehow her words worked their way into this man's heart, and he felt that he had been a poor steward of his wealth. He immediately established four full, four-year scholarships at Lindsey Wilson College for four young African employees from his company. He also gave a house next to the church for Christian Education. In three months the congregation had doubled. Rarely are there less than 30 and sometimes as many as 40 at a service. From what I am told, it is one of the fastest growing churches in the presbytery. End of prelude. (Your redemption is nearer than you believed.)

            The story: Betty Meadows and I just kept hearing good stories and not being opposed to good stories, we decided to make a joint visitation to both of the churches served by this rather extraordinary priest. On January 14 of this year, we left at 7 a.m. and drove to Munfordville. I was to preach at the Presbyterian Church, and Betty was to preside at the Eucharist. The reverse was to occur at St. Andrew's Episcopal. Like Paul and Silas, we went on our missionary Journey.

            We arrived at Munfordville about 15 minutes prior to the service’s beginning. The church is beautifully maintained. A simple Federal brick building erected in 1824, it sits on a hill in the center of town. A small baby grand piano, ably played by a nice Baptist lady, gave us the pitch as we launched into a pretty vigorous “God of Grace and God of Glory.” The gospel for the day was the Miracle at Cana. I concluded my sermon with a story I had discovered in "Interpretation" from the life of St. Jerome. Jerome was asked by his students if the guests had consumed all of the wine from the five water jars. Jerome's response was, "No, we are still drinking it."

            We soon moved to the liturgy of the Lord's Supper, and I was motioned to stand at the communion table with the elders as Betty recited the Eucharistic prayer. It was from the Presbyterian Book of Worship and had the words of institution very close to a very explicit epiclesis! The elders administered the elements to the congregation as the piano player was playing very softly “Break Thou the Bread of Life.” As the elders passed the tray of cups which were at that moment a kind of sign of multiplication of abundance of wine, and said the “blood of Christ,” everyone, all 40 of us in that church, knew on that Lord's day that Jerome was right! After church, I was again thanked by the members for making it possible for Suzanne to be their pastor. Several told stories of how they had not been in church for years but were coming back to the faith. Cap Middleton, one of the elders, described their new outreach ministry. The congregation was sponsoring a reading, program based at the library to help elementary children increase their reading skills. This is the first outreach project the congregation has had for many years.

            I am not easily moved to tears but I fought tears during the entire visit. I had encountered Jesus in the word of scripture, in the baptized community and in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Like any true encounter with the living God, it was both moving and disturbing a "mysterium tremendum et facinans."

            As I reflected on the morning in Munfordville, I realized that it was the best ecumenical experience I had had in a very long time. It made me understand how very Pauline I am at the center of my being. Having declared at the beginning that this is not a sermon, nevertheless, I have found a text. "For in the Spirit we were all baptized into one body Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and were all made to drink of one spirit." The joy of that morning several weeks ago has awakened me to a fear. I worry that at this moment in the life of the church we might be in real danger of loosing Paul's very organic understanding of the body of Christ and replacing it with a propositional understanding.

            We were at "one" on January 14 not because of any agreement between Presbyterians and Episcopalians but because we had been baptized into the saving event of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We were united not by the worthy "work" of a document but by the divine action of the living God, who constituted each of us to be his body through the watery grave of our baptism in which we had died and risen with Jesus.

            We, as his body had invoked the Holy Spirit over the elements which John Zizioulas claims is the only infallible thing the church does -- we drank the one spirit. The reality of that morning was holy, God given, organic-like a body is organic.

            As I ponder both my ministry in service of ecumenism and my life presently in the Anglican Communion, I fear the danger of a drift from the organic to the propositional. Now I don't want to fall into the trip of the late 19th and early 20th century of dismissing theological considerations. This is not an appeal of “doctrine divides, duty unites!” It is however, a plea for a baptismal and Eucharistic understanding of the body of Christ because both baptism and Eucharist are about God's definitive action to create us, who are "no people," into the very body of Jesus Christ.

            Although I have been present at many tables where Christians have attempted to write something that helps us discover more deeply the unity that is always God's gift, I worry particularly that in Anglicanism we are in danger of replacing the notion that our unity is God's divine gift with the notion that unity is the result of signing a document or covenant or agreement. It seems to me that if this document becomes the test of who is in and who is out this God's constituting action in Holy Baptism is in danger of being subjugated to a kind of human articles of incorporation. To my mind a mistake at best and a sacrilege at worst!

            It was a holy moment at Munfordville. May our labors and work serve the God who bestows the spirit, creates the body and asks us to receive each other as sacrament of God's grace, God action, God's choosing. Thank you and keep at it!