Cambridge Theological Federation

Text: Ephesians 4:1-3

It is very good indeed to be here this evening for this long-awaited occasion. John Proctor's lovely account of how the Cambridge Theological Federation has gone backwards through time gathering up the fragments of more and more ancient separations has offered us a historical perspective on the convergence of traditions and communities / that this Federation represents.

Institutional Creativity

It often appears in retrospect that each further development has been part of an almost inevitable flow. But those of us who have been close enough to the Federation's evolution to see something of what it has actually taken to bring us to this occasion know that time and again there seemed to be no necessity at all in the next step. As I look around here now, I recognize with great gratitude many of the people who have done the institutional imagining, the realistic thinking and planning, have argued the case, taken the decisions, coped with the problems and misunderstandings, negotiated the new arrangements through hours of meetings and redraftings, and have helped to run the resulting organisation. And I think too of the many people no longer in Cambridge who have contributed to this culmination.

John Proctor's main horizon was that of the history of Christianity. There is also the significant, though considerably smaller, horizon of the history of theological education here in Cambridge. The Federation's remarkable development in recent years

has been accompanied by the University of Cambridge developing its engagement with theology and religious studies in a transformation that has probably been the largest in its hundreds of years of history. That has involved a new degree with the Federation (the B.Th., Bachelors in Theology for Ministry), a revised Tripos undergraduate course, the founding of the Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies, new endowed posts, and a new building. And the Federation has also drawn into its educational matrix Anglia Polytechnic and other universities, and has developed links with other institutions and with other countries, from Hong Kong to USA to South Africa. Add this to all that John Proctor has said about the core institutions of the Federation and we have something that is hard to parallel anywhere in the world. This has been a period of extraordinary institutional creativity.

Encouragement to Celebrate, Thank and Praise

My text is Ephesians 4:1-3:

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

More specifically, my text is the first three Greek words of the first verse of that: Parakalo oun umas The NRSV translation we have had is 'I therefore ... beg you'. Parakalo is a very strong word: beg, beseech, comfort, advocate, encourage, and so on. I want to choose the last of those, and translate this text: 'I therefore encourage you… And the first thing I want to encourage you to do in line with the message of Ephesians this evening is to celebrate and give thanks in this worship and in the party afterwards for all this institutional creativity. Ephesians gives a gloriously broad brief for thanksgiving -as long as you avoid getting drunk:

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (5:19-20)

And one fascinating thing about the Greek of that passage is that the sense runs on without a break: the singing and the thanksgiving flow on without syntactical interruption into instructions about the institutions of marriage, family life, and that basic economic institution of slavery. Institutions themselves are to be permeated and transformed by being taken up into an atmosphere of praise and thanksgiving.

What a Horizon!

But that is looking forward from our text to the content of what Ephesians encourages. This text at the beginning of Chapter 4 is in fact the pivot on which the whole letter turns. Its encouragement to 'lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called' comes in the following three chapters. Its 'therefore' gathers up the whole of the first three chapters as the horizon and ecology within which that life flourishes.

And what a horizon! -- far vaster than the history of Christianity, let alone the history of theological education in Cambridge. Just try to imagine a Cambridge Theological Federation that took the first three chapters of Ephesians seriously. Our horizon, within which we would be trying to make sense of ourselves and our world would be formed by 1:8-10 that we heard at the opening of this service:

With all wisdom and insight [God] has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

This is what we are part of, an ecology (oikovomia ) in which all things are being drawn together by God towards the fullness of time.

Our Federation perhaps has its deepest meaning as one sign, in this place, of that divine movement of interrelation and reconciliation. Our studies can be inspired by the encouragement to enter more and more fully into the 'wisdom and insight' that help us make sense of the universe, of history, of the world's religions, of academic disciplines, and of our own lives. Our worship can be inspired not only by the way Ephesians Chapter 1 gathers up all things in heaven and on earth, including the whole of Christian life and faith and thought, into 'the praise of God's glory'; but also by Chapter 3's incomparable prayer that we have just heard -- a prayer that, with extraordinary daring, asks to be 'filled with all the fullness of God'.

The Mystery that Breaks down Categories and Walls

And in between those two chapters, in Chapter 2, is that part of the mystery that breaks all our categories, and is Ephesians' secret of reconciliation, unity and the bond of peace: 'He [Jesus Christ] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.' (2:14) The cross of Jesus Christ is there at the heart of Christian community. Graham Cray's slogan for Ridley -- now, I notice, also appearing in Federation documents - is 'Roots down, walls down'. That is only possible if the cross is the tree whose roots are going down.

But note which are the groups that Ephesians is talking about here as united by the cross and having their hostility ended. They are Jews and Gentiles. The history of relations between Jews and Christians seems like a tragically ironic commentary on this chapter. And the death of Jesus has often been used by Christians to justify their contempt for Jews. There are no easy or short-term ways to heal that history. But, as Ed Kessler has suggested, to have the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations as an associate member of the Federation, is to be committed to facing the imperative of healing it. it should also be a constant reminder of the most radical purpose of the Federation: the healing of the people of God for the sake of the healing of the whole world. As Paul showed in his anguished wrestling over this in Romans Chapters 9-1 1, it is something that rightly demands our passionate dedication, and it also overwhelms all our attempts to overview it, to sound its depths , or to wrap it up. Paul's own conclusion in Romans 11 was:

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways! (Romans 11:33)

In a place like Cambridge, the humility of that awe in the presence of God's wisdom, acknowledging that we are not able to search it all out, is something to be encouraged in this and in other matters.

Conclusion

So far I have mainly looked back from my pivotal text to the way the first three chapters of Ephesians give the ecology in which the encouragement of the rest of the letter is rooted. But what about the practical encouragement of Chapters 4-6 as it might apply to this Federation? From this I want to draw just three concluding points.

(i) Words That Build

First, the encouragement of those chapters has a great deal about communication and the use of the tongue. The whole letter gives a sense of being full to overflowing with something so good, so rich and so superabundantly glorious that language is being piled up higher and higher to try (without ever succeeding) to do justice to it. The gifts given to build up the Church are largely expressed in speech -- apostolic witness, prophecy, evangelism, teaching, pastoring. But the encouragement to the Church suggests that all this must be accompanied by attention to every word we say in ordinary life, 'speaking the truth in love' in order to build up the community, avoiding loose and silly talk, anger, bitterness, falsehood, gossip, slander, and so on. 'Words that build' is the slogan. Both Church and academic life can be pretty violent and aggressive affair, and the main weapons in both are words. I wonder whether, in a place like Cambridge, anything would give a more powerful witness and at the same time build up the Federation itself more effectively than if everyone here this evening were to guard his or her tongue, were to use 'words that build' in all Federation matters, and were to develop habits of speaking, as our text encourages us to do, 'with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love' (4:2)?

(ii) Every Ligament

My second point is about one of the favourite words of Ephesians, 'every' or 'all'. It is well suited to uniting the vast horizons of the first three chapters -- 'all wisdom', 'all things', and 'all the fullness of God' -- with the routine detail of everyday life in community -- 'all humility', and 'every ligament' of the body of the Church that we need to attend to if it is to be built up in love. It is worth meditating on what the ligaments of the Federation might be. I suspect that if we did so we might emerge with a healthy respect for the importance of all sorts of administrative tasks, proper procedures, and even committee meetings. As Lesslie Newbigin used to say, 'God works through committees too'. It is often in responsible attention to the detail and to the wiser shaping of institutional life that we do the building up without which good long-term living together is impossible.

(iii) Love - The One Hope of Our Calling

Finally, as we look to the future, I want to move to the verses in Ephesians 4 just beyond my text. They read:

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in alL

That must be the strongest conceivable encouragement to sustain and develop yet further the unity that has already been achieved -- or, perhaps better, been given and received-- in this Federation. I just want to underline one phrase in that: 'the one hope of your calling.' Our hope is in the call of God. And that call is, in the words of the prayer in Ephesians 3, to 'have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.' (vv.18-19) Let us, in a moment of silence, contemplate that love, that fullness, as the one hope of our calling for all the years ahead.

SILENCE