Bulletin 8.10.25

Let me speak from the heart for a moment. St Paul said, “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” To work together and to grow together we must be tolerant, no one person or faction seeking to dominate another. Speaking to the Ephesians, who were of course a mixture of Jews and Gentiles, Paul reminds us that God's gift to the church is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views which gives our church its strength. And over the course of many years in the service of our mother the church let me tell you, there is one sin which I have come to fear above all others: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity; certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance… Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.

 – “Cardinal Lawrence” played by Ralph Fiennes in the 2024 film 

Conclave, directed by Edward Berger

Ideally, however, the church itself is not made up of natural “friends.” It is made up of natural enemies. What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort. Christians come together, not because they form a natural collocation, but because they have all been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common allegiance…They are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.

 – D. A. Carson, Love in Hard Places (2002)