By the end of March, I shall have completed six months in post as the Church of England’s National Adviser for Ecumenical Relations. Last month, I was commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a service that marked both a beginning and a reminder: ecumenism is not an optional extra in the life of the Church; it is part of the Church’s calling.
As I look back on these first months – and ahead to the Archbishop’s installation in Canterbury in March – I have been reflecting on the importance of Christian unity. Elsewhere I have written about the State Visit to Rome last October and the remarkable role His Majesty The King played in encouraging closer relationships between the churches. It was a striking moment to witness. In many ways, what he accomplished in a single visit through his presence, friendship, and encouragement illustrates something important about ecumenism: its fruits are not always easily measured. After all, how do we measure friendship?
Friendship, trust, and shared witness are often the quiet foundations on which unity grows.
By coincidence, I was preaching at the King’s Chapel of the Savoy last Sunday. Reflecting on the Gospel of John, I was struck again by Jesus’ words: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” The passage recounts the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman – an encounter that crossed boundaries of culture, history, and suspicion. It was a moment where division gave way to conversation, and conversation opened the door to transformation.
In many ways, the ecumenical journey looks similar. It begins with encounter. It grows through listening. And it leads us to discover Christ already present in places we did not expect.
But the deeper question for all of our churches is this: what nourishes us? What is our spiritual food?
In the sermon, I reflected on how we move forward. Unlike in corporate strategy, or business ventures, the church moves forward precisely by looking back – by gazing again upon the cross of Christ and by remembering the apostolic faith handed down through the generations.
And herein lies an important challenge for all our churches.
In a rapidly-changing culture, there is always the temptation to think that the church must constantly reshape its message in order to remain relevant. Yet the Christian tradition has always insisted on something different. “The cross stands firm while the world turns.”
Or to put it another way: the cross stands firm as the basis by which we seek to bring about change in the culture and the world, rather than allowing ourselves to be changed by it.
This is not a call to retreat from society or to ignore the needs of our time. Rather, it is an invitation to root our witness deeply in the unchanging reality of Christ crucified and risen.
And this raises an ecumenical question for all of us – Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Baptist, Free Church, Pentecostal, and many others. Are we prepared to place the cross once again at the centre of our common life? Are we willing to listen to one another in humility, trusting that Christ may be speaking through our brothers and sisters in other traditions? And are we ready to recognise that Christian unity is not simply a structural project, but a spiritual calling?
The Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel becomes an unexpected witness to Christ because she listens. She encounters the living water that transforms her life. The same invitation remains open to us.
Ecumenism ultimately begins not with strategy, but with conversion, with the willingness to listen again to the voice of Christ and to follow where he leads.
If we do, we may discover that unity is not something we create ourselves. It is something we receive, together, as a gift of grace. And perhaps that is the real measure of ecumenism: not statistics or agreements alone, but lives shaped by the cross and communities transformed by the love of Christ.
Rev Dr Matthias Grebe is the National Adviser for Ecumenical Relations, based at Lambeth Palace. In this role, he is responsible for developing and sustaining the Church of England’s ecumenical relationships, both at home and abroad, and supports the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in their ecumenical engagements.