In Our Lord’s great prayer before His Passion, He prays for the Church, “..that they may all be one as we are one”  (John 17:11). This  prayer for unity amongst his followers is in the spirit of Psalm 133: “ Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

Yet there is another reason for the importance of Our Lord's prayer - a greater reason. We are to be one because God is One. As Our Lord goes on to say, “ ...that they may all be ONE, as you, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they may be ONE in Us.....”  We who have been “baptised into Christ have put on Christ “ (Gal.3:27). We have been clothed in Christ.

But if we are not one with each other, this is a partial clothing, and we are falling short of what Our Lord wills for us. If we are not one in this way,  our fullness in Christ is incomplete. We are called to share in the life of God. To be One as the Father and the Son ( and the Holy Spirit ) are One. We are called to participate in the life of the Holy Trinity, the oneness of God; but if our oneness with each other is flawed, we fall short.

This invitation to participate in the life of God and to become new creatures is given to us because the Christ we have put on makes all things new. Sadly, often, we fail to live up to this. We choose otherwise. We choose to stay with unredeemed Adam and Eve. We choose to revel in our fallenness. We fail to rise up to our precious calling. Christ became man that we might become as God ( as St Athanasios says ) but we prefer to remain as fallen man, and the fullness of our vocation is not realised.

Our respective histories have led to this. We have forgotten the reasons which led to our separation in the first place. We have become stuck in entrenched positions. It is these which pull us away from the fullness of the Christian life, Life in Christ.

There is a third aspect of what Our Lord says, in St John's gospel, “ ….that they may be ONE, as you Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they may be ONE in Us, that the world may believe [that You sent Me].”  That is, that we are in a world which needs an energetic re-christianisation, a new evangelism.

Be sure that organisations like “ UK for Islam”, although recently banned, given the chance, will grow stronger and stronger. An age of atheism is well established and will become more fixed. Paganism will grow. In this situation, the Christian Church, if present trends continue, will get smaller and smaller. The chaplains of the universities in Nottingham (and it will be true elsewhere) describe how amongst 30,000 students, they know only of several hundred overt Christians. They predict than in years ahead there may be no Christian students at all!

So now here is a new imperative: We must seek to be one - to be one with God - and in this oneness  to take on this important task of evangelisation together, “ that the world may believe”.

Since the Ecumenical movement began over a hundred years ago, we have been praying for unity across the divisions of Christianity. There has been much progress. We speak to each other, we work together in many ways (though not enough). We no longer burn each other at the stake! And we do have joint efforts and good working relationships in so many areas.

But something always stops us from going that extra mile. The process comes to a standstill when that extra effort has to be made. We are not one as our Lord wishes. It is as if we prefer to stay within our fallenness and cling on to where we are, stuck with the agenda of our own particular denomination ( not always of our own making).

So I put before you two thoughts for consideration. Firstly, within the Orthodox Church, to which I belong, struggles, differences, disunity are not based on matters of faith or doctrines as in other parts of Christendom. In faith, belief, doctrine, interpretation there is mostly complete agreement. But there is lack of unity! Here, lack of oneness is based on something else - nationality, ethnicity, tribal grouping. In its extreme manifestation as serious as heresy.

There is only one Church of Christ, one only. There is no such thing as the Russian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church. The term Russian Orthodox was first used by Stalin in 1943 when he was rallying the Church to help in the war effort at that time. Before that it was the Orthodox Church in Russia, the Orthodox Church in Greece, the Orthodox Church in.....

May I suggest that this should be true also in the whole of Christendom. No such thing as the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Methodist  Church.... No! Let us speak of only the Church of Christ, the one Body of Christ; the Church of Christ in whatever place it is found. Perhaps of Roman Tradition, of Anglican Tradition , of Methodist Tradition.... but only one Church of Christ in Great Britain and Ireland, in these lands. This is how we should view ourselves.

Secondly, some parts of each tradition might be incomplete. Not all parts may have the fullness of what Christ has given to His Church. Not all may be open to what the Holy Spirit has been leading us into over the past millennium when greatest divisions have occurred.

One Orthodox bishop in Kiev, in the 1920’s, startled his hearers when he announced that there should be a greater outreach to other Christian denominations because Truth always prevails. The truth of the Gospel always wins through and the causes of division, whether of heresy, misunderstanding, human failings will no longer be there. We reach not into the division but into that which is there to unite.

I understand that there is now a new initiative in our ecumenical endeavour, known as “ Receptive Ecumenism”. This, now, is what we should each be asking. What can we learn from other traditions? What do they have that would enhance our Christian life? How can they help us in our understanding of God? We should no longer be primarily concerned by what separates us and how we are different (from other traditions), but what can we learn, how can we benefit! What have they got that can enrich my part of the Church. What, through their prayers, through their fidelity, has the Holy Spirit taught them. How can we reach through the divisions which divide into the truth which is there to unite the Church in this land?

And so, again, at this annual service of unity to which our brothers here so generously invite us, we pray for oneness, as did Our Lord. “Father, I pray [with sweat of blood] that they all may be one as We are One, that they may experience the fullness of life in Us which only their oneness can bring, that the world may believe”.

Let us pray for this oneness, and to dwell together in unity, that we may be enabled to put on the full mantle of Christ as given in our baptism and that the world may believe and no one will be lost.

This oneness in the Holy Trinity means that all personal agenda be put aside, that we receive from each other the full gifts of God poured upon us all in this past thousand years. Only what really matters must lead us forward: oneness and fullness in Christ.