by CCW | 9 February 2026 04:00
This homily, preached by Fr. David Curry at an ecumenical service in 1999, offers an extended and charitable view about the common mind of the Church in and through the churches. He recently sent this out to the discussion group about the concept of the consensus fidelium, and now we post it here.
“That they all may be one” is the prayer of the Son to the Father. The force of that prayer derives entirely from his being with us in the substance of our humanity. He is “the Word made flesh who dwelt among us”. His prayer expresses something of the purpose of his being with us. He seeks our “atonement”, our ‘at-one-ment’, that is to say, our being at one through our being with him in his being with the Father.
It was the poet and preacher John Donne who observed, in his magisterial Christmas sermon at the beginning of his ministry at St. Paul’s, London in 1621, that the “wholle Gospell [of John] is comprehended in the beginning thereof” and that “in this first chapter is contracted all that which is extensively spread…through the whole Booke. For here is … the Foundation of all, the Divinitie of Christ”. It was the burden of his sermon to show that Word, Son, and Light were more than mere metaphors; they belong “essentially and personally”, “truly and properly” to his divine identity, to his being one with the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. His being with us is the condition of our being one. We can only be one through him, through his being with us in his essential identity as the Word and Son of the Father.
This is the burden of the Church’s proclamation. What is proclaimed to the whole world is received for the whole world; and it creates a new world, as it were. That new world is the Church Oecumenical, the Church Universal (οικυηεναι), which is shaped fundamentally and essentially by what has been given to be proclaimed.
The Church, in some sense, is that whole new world, not the global village of cosmic orphans, mind you, but the whole world as the household of faith, defined by what has been received and by what is given to be proclaimed. The Church is not and cannot be a closed door society. The Church is open to the world, not to be overrun by its follies and concerns, noble or otherwise, to be sure, but to proclaim the world’s redemption in Christ, to set love in order and to be the place where the world is at peace with God in his reconciling love for the world. The Church is not a closed door society because, first and foremost, the Church exists to be open to God in the truth of his revelation, to be the place where God dwells with us, where his Word is preached and his Sacraments are celebrated, where his Praises are sung, where Prayers are offered in his Name; the place where our prayers find their place in his prayer.
“That they all may be one” is the prayer that is constantly repeated by Christ to the Father:
“that they may be one”(John 17.11)
“that they all may be one”(John 17.21)
“that they may be one”(John 17.22)
“that they may be perfectly one”(John 17.23)
We are the “they” of his prayer. And yet his prayer includes far more than just ourselves who are gathered here in the integrity of our ecclesiological identities. It does not simply mean the world either, but rather all those who have received and identified with what is proclaimed to the world and what is, in principle, for the world. To receive and identify with the proclamation is to enter into the knowing love of the Trinity: “that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me”(John 17. 23).
“That they all may be one”. Is this merely wishful thinking, a fond desire which, however noble, hasn’t the slightest hope of being realised? Or is it somehow profoundly true? Somehow already present and realised? Somehow already here as what we truly participate in and proclaim? Not perfectly, perhaps – no doubt we all have a long ways to go – but nonetheless, it is here, truly and properly, as that without which we would have no identity in Christ.
You see, somehow we are already one in the knowing love of the Trinity: one in what we have received and in what we proclaim; one, we might say, in the basic essentials of the Christian faith. We are bound to have fellowship, of some sort or another, with anyone who professes “Jesus is Lord”. For to say “Jesus is Lord” is to make a Trinitarian statement. “No-one can say Jesus is Lord, but by the power of the Holy Spirit”.
Just a few moments ago, we all said together the Apostles’ Creed. That, you may say, is characteristic of Anglican worship, but it is also quite proper for this ecumenical occasion. You see, the Apostles’ Creed is not an Anglican Creed. It is not a Baptist Creed. It is not a Roman Catholic Creed. It is not a United Church Creed. It is not a Presbyterian Creed and so on. It is the Oecumenical Creed, the Creed of the Universal Church, both in itself and in its further elaboration in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds.
It is the Creed of our common and essential faith, the Creed of our fundamental identity in Christ through baptism, however construed, and the Creed which is basic and fundamental to each of our ecclesiological identities, in some sense or other, whether as Presbyterians, Uniteds, Roman Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostals, Nazarenes, Salvationists or Anglicans, whether it is promulgated in confessional documents or proclaimed in the liturgy. The Apostles’ Creed is the most basic expression of the essential catholicism of the churches of the Protestant reformation and the Counter-reformation traditions.
It embodies, in other words, the consensual catholicism of the Church Oecumenical, the Rule of Faith “which the Church has received from the Apostles and their disciples” (Irenaeus). For “what comes to be known as the Apostles’ Creed is [essentially] what was handed on by those who handed on the Scriptures” (Ambrose) and “what we are, we are from them” (Tertullian). The Creed is the distillation of what the Scriptures essentially teach. And the fundamental identity of the Church, too, is concentrated in the Creed as derived from the Scriptures: “The Holy Catholic Church”, the Church Universal.
This unity of faith is not just something which stands over and above the differences between ecclesial institutions or even within them. For apart from our sins and follies, our intolerances and ignorances, there are legitimate and important differences which ultimately belong to the fullness of the faith and which are somehow comprehended within the fundamental unity of the faith proclaimed in the Creed.
There are differences in polity; differences in the understanding of the relation between faith and order; differences in sacramental understanding; differences in pastoral practice; differences in liturgical worship, and so on. But, may it not be suggested that these differences are fundamentally contained within a principle of doctrinal unity articulated, for instance, in the Creed; in other words, contained within the knowing love of God?
No doubt, the challenge for each of us is to give proper and adequate expression to the fullness of the faith through the integrity of our particular traditions. And, no doubt, too, that means we must be challenging one another out of respect for one another about the faith which we hold in common. For the challenge is that we may become what we behold in Christ and that we may be what we are in Christ, that we, like they “may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me”.
Fr.David Curry
Christ Church
Windsor,NS
January 24, 1999
(Eve of the Conversion of St. Paul)
Service of Prayer for Christian Unity
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2026/02/09/that-they-all-may-be-one-service-of-prayer-for-christian-unity/
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