From this morning's epistle: 'To unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth'

In one of C P Snow's novels about Cambridge college life, a rather ill-tempered college meeting is grinding towards a close, and a vote has to be taken. The outcome by this time is obvious. The only question is how large the majority will be. The chairman appeals to Winslow, one of the most eloquent spokesmen of the minority, although the matter at issue doesn't much concern him. Will he change his vote? With his usual elegant sarcasm, Winslow replies, 'Certainly, Master. I am always happy to lend my name to an appearance of meaningless unanimity'.

To appeal to or speak in the name of unity in the Church is very easily capable of slipping into the search for an appearance of meaningless unanimity. Unity has become a flaccid word, a default option, a denial of pain and work and real difference. No-one can speak against it, it is a motherhood and apple-pie concept; and this means that no-one much wants to speak for it either. At this Synod, it is more than usually in our minds - not only because of our internal affairs but because of our relations with the Methodist Church ; for how many of us though is it a word inviting a touch of boredom or of scepticism?

But here in this morning's epistle we are told that the hidden purpose of God, finally and amazingly laid bare to us, is to unite all things in heaven and earth in Jesus Christ; and that this purpose is already being realised by the Holy Spirit in the present life of the Church. Whatever is going on here, it is more than the appearance of meaningless unanimity. Heaven and earth have been estranged, incapable of communicating. But something has happened which changes heaven and earth. Heaven, the realm where angels live only to praise God, is laid open to human beings. They can bring their flawed and stumbling words into the angels' perfect song without fear or shame. 'Therefore with angels and archangels...' we say, acknowledging that heaven's harmony can accommodate even our untrained and raucous voices. And earth is altered for ever: there are no corners of our human world where praise cannot be offered, no place too dark for God's glory to find some reflection.

'To unite all things in him': this unity is achieved by and through that action by which God brings us into fellowship with himself, the cross of Jesus which makes our peace with God and one another. So unity appears as the fruit of an inexpressible cost, the self-emptying of God the Word; and the bearing of that cost unites by changing, by opening heaven and converting earth. Unity here is not consensus or tactical alliance or denial. It is renewed life, given in the passion of Christ. Living in the Church is living in the aftermath of this divine event, living in a landscape where the barriers between heaven and earth are down, and the barriers between human beings are down. Here and now - and very especially when we meet for the Eucharist - we inhabit this new landscape.

But if we turn to other epistles, above all the Roman and Corinthian letters, what do we see of this new life? Passionate party spirit ('I belong to Paul, I belong to Apollos'); moral confusion ('It is actually reported that there is immorality among you'), bitterness and superiority ('Why do you despise your brother?'; 'You gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves!'), ignoring the needs of the disadvantaged ('You despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing'). The actual common life of the communities to which Paul writes falls a little short of anything that looks convincingly like a foretaste of heaven and earth in harmony.

So what is striking is that Paul appeals for unity not as a way of denying conflict or smoothing over the surface but because the conflicts and failures of the churches are the opportunity for wresting a gift out of what seems a curse. Each member of the Body is gifted for the sake of all others; break the unity of the community and you will never receive what God has for you in the life of the other. Paul's fierce challenges to his churches leave us with no illusions about this being easy. To abide in unity through the sort of savage quarrels he describes is absolutely not the soft option. The Apollos party and the Cephas party in Corinth, or the rigorists about food laws in Romans would all have a much nicer time if they retreated into their separate enclaves. But, as Paul puts it in both Romans and I Corinthians, to do this is would be to forget that they are there in the first place because Christ died for them all.

The challenge of Paul's gospel appears most radically at this point. The irreducible facts about the brother or sister are that Christ died for them and that the Spirit wants to give something through them. To cling to unity is to cling to those convictions, especially when everything in us cries out for separation. Or, in plain words, unity is a gospel imperative to just the extent that we find it hard. Unity is a gospel imperative when we recognise that it opens us to change, to conversion; when we realise how our life with Christ is somehow bound up with our willingness to abide with those we think are sinful and those we think are stupid. A community where people don't care about the effects of their actions or where people are preoccupied constantly with the conditions under which they will stay in touch with each other is one in which what I earlier called the pain and the work and the real difference that we can see in the churches to which Paul wrote are being forgotten. A New Testament Church is one in which unity is seen as vital precisely because it invites us to struggle for blessing as we wrestle with a stranger. If someone else stands with me claiming the promises of Christ, then, for St Paul , my first assumption must always be that in unity - in conversation and struggle, agreement, argument, shared praise - I shall receive from them something of Christ.

Today's gospel of course prompts thoughts of other kinds of peace and unity, and it is a nice irony that we read it alongside these visionary words from Ephesians. It is the same King Herod who, later in the gospel narrative, achieves a kind of reconciliation with Pilate when they join in the rejection and condemnation of Jesus. There is indeed a unity born of cowardice - as plenty of people are willing to remind us; and Herod's execution of the Baptist is no doubt something that brings him a faintly guilty but relieved sense that peace is restored in the palace. Jesus arises to disturb his peace; and, with Pilate, Herod will once again conspire in the removal of Jesus for the sake of peace and unity. And Jesus - literally - arises to disturb the whole world's peace for the sake of the whole world's salvation, for the sake of unity between heaven and earth. To live in his peace, in his unity, is to live constantly in the presence of his call to be converted. It is to recognise the immense cost of a unity that truly brings differences into a shared praise; and to accept that it will cost us everything. The luxury of separation is really death; the pain of unity is really life for us, who are 'destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory'.

© Rowan Williams 2003